Achaeometrical Research in Hungary II., 1988

PROSPECTING and DATING - Ede HERTELENDI - Éva SVINGOR - Pál RACZKY - Ferenc HORVÁTH - István FUTÓ - László BARTOSIEWICZ - Mihály MOLNÁR: Radicarbon chronology of the Neolithic and time span of tell settlements in eastern Hungary based on calibrated radiocarbon dates

This study is aimed at eliminating this paucity of absolute chronological data for the Carpathian Basin. The tell settlements in the Great Hungarian Plain are characterised by consecutive layers of habitation built on top of each other forming vertical stratigraphies. The diachronic interpretation of these stratified "cultures", defined mostly on the basis of ceramic styles (relative i. e. typochronological method), has intensified and has been supported by radiocarbon dates (HERTELENDI et al. 1995, 239-245). Little is known, however, of the length of occupation, the "life spans" of individual tell settlements and their precise chronological relationships with each other. Understanding the chronological relationships within groups of settlements will ultimately permit a better understanding of settlement distributions and wider social organizations of the populations who inhabited this region of Hungary. Information on lifespans of individual settlements can potentially also shed light on patterns of land use at the end of the Neolithic. Methods We collected all relevant radiocarbon dates of the Great Hungarian Plain from the literature and made new measurements. We tabulated the dates by cultural entities, and calibrated them using the computer programs of STUIVER and REIMER (1993, 1-25.), respectively. We calibrated the radiocarbon dates from the same culture as a set of related dates and calculated the cumulative probability density functions with selected quartiles and interquartile ranges (AITCHISON et al., 1991, 108-116). We plotted the composite probability distribution of calendric ages of related dates from each culture and estimated the duration of cultures using 68.3 % confidence intervals. Probability distributions of dates for different cultures have different shapes, depending mostly on the numbers of archaeological sites and the dates from each site. For determination of time span of tell settlements we used dating results from archeological sites: Berettyóújfalu - Herpály (37 samples), Hódmezővásárhely - Gorzsa-Cukortanya (20 samples), Öcsöd - Kováshalom (14 samples), Polgár - Csöszhalom (76 samples) The latter, stratified tell is also associated with a single-layer, horizontal settlement, Polgár 6, whose dates are also discussed in this study. Archaeologically, the sites under discussion here represent different relative chronological intervals. Berettyóújfalu - Herpály (6 typochronological levels) and Hódmezővásárhely - Gorzsa-Cukortanya (4 typochronological levels) represent the most complete relative chronological, "cultural" continuum, spanning between the beginning of the Late Neolithic Period to the Copper Age. As is shown by the stylistic distribution of ceramic materials, the tell site of Polgár Csőszhalom can be sub-divided into three main phases within the same interval. Of these, the horizontal settlement adjacent to the tell seems to be related to the earlier Late Neolithic strata. Occupation at the shorter lived, and apparently early Late Neolithic tell of Öcsöd - Kováshalom (2 levels) also came to an end before the wake of the Neolithic Period in the Great Hungarian Plain. Results We devided the Neolithic cultures from Eastern Hungary into nine general groups. Radiocarbon dates available for this study were classified within their respective groups in Table 1. Using more than 300 calibrated radiocarbon dates from the Great Hungarian Plain, we constructed a series of cumulative probability densitograms (Fig. 1). These show the absolute chronological boundaries and duration of the nine cultural groups. o2