Gyöngyössy Márton (szerk.): Perspectives on the Past. Major Excavations in County Pest (Szentendre, 2008)
(2700/2500-800 ВС) were designed for the consumption of alcohol and that the introduction of beer and mead to Europe may have fuelled their spread. The Bell Beaker cemetery containing 1070 burials at Budakalász in an area called Csajerszke is the culture’s largest cemetery in Europe (the next largest burial grounds from Moravia and Hungary contained between one and two hundred graves). The cemetery lies ca. 200 meters from the Danube, while the settlement itself lay directly by the river. A roughly 40,000 m2 large area was investigated under the direction of Katalin Ottományi. Some of the graves were enclosed within a round ditch, although the main burial rite in the culture’s Hungarian distribution was cremation, conforming to earlier local traditions. The ashes and calcinated bones of the deceased were placed in a vessel and deposited in the grave together with various grave goods. The deceased interred according to the inhumation rite were laid to rest in a crouched position in a rectangular grave pit. Symbolic burials containing several vessels, but lacking any skeletal remains, were also quite frequent. Footed bowls, handled jugs and urns with appliqué decoration were the most common pottery wares. In addition to bell beakers, the finds from the cemetery include stone wrist-guards used by archers, chipped stone arrowheads, copper daggers, awls, bone buttons and a few ornaments. • András Czene In Western Europe, the use of metals, and especially of copper and its natural alloys, can often be linked to a widely distributed group of finds made up of bell beakers and a set of distinctive artefacts associated with this pottery in the 3rd millennium BC. The Bell Beaker culture was distributed from northern Morocco to the British Isles and from Sicily to Hungary and Poland. The finds from Hungary have their best counterparts among the assemblages from Moravia. Bell Beaker sites can generally be found along major rivers and sea coasts. The seafaring skills of the Beaker population are evidenced by various articles made from African ivory found in the southern Spanish ports of this population, attesting to regular trading activity. The culture’s type find is one of the most attractive ceramic wares of European prehistory: an inverted bell shaped vessel covered with geometric designs arranged in panels, sometimes encrusted with lime. Some vessels were adorned with a painted decoration. British scholars have suggested that the beakers Bell beakers at Budakalász
