A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 36. - 1994 (Nyíregyháza, 1995)

Elisabetta Starnini: Typological and technological analysis of the Körös Culture stone assemblages of Méhtelek-Nádas and Tiszacsege (North-East Hungary). A Preliminary report

Typological and technological analysis of the Körös Culture stone assemblages of Méhtelek-Nádas and Tiszacsege (North-East Hungary) A preliminary report Elisabetta STARNINI Preface The site of Méhtelek-Nádas (county Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg) is located in North-Eastern Hungary, between the rivers Szamos and Túr, close to the Roumanian border. It lies on the top of a low elevation, on the first gravel terrace of the river Túr, south of the village of Méhtelek (Fig. 1). The site was discovered about twenty years ago during the construction of the flood barrier along the Roumanian border and excavated in 1973 by Drs. N. Kalicz and J. Makkay (KALICZ-MAKKAY 1976.). The extent of the settlement was estimated to be about 6400 square meters (KALICZ-MAKKAY 1976.14.), only 40% of which were investigated during the rescue excavation. Eight pits in total were recognized and excavated. They produced characteristic Early Neolithic Körös Culture artifacts including a rich chipped, polished and ground stone assemblage. The lithic collection from Méhtelek-Nádas is one of the richest Early Neolithic assemblages from the Great 1 Hungarian Plain . Three radiocarbon dates have been obtained from the charcoal collected from two Early Neolithic pits. They all fall into the first half of the 7th millennium BP. They are: Bln-1331: 6835±60 BP (Pit 1-3/cc), Bln-1332: 6655±60 BP and GrN-6897:6625±50 BP (Pit 4-5/cO (KALICZ-MAKKAY 1976.23.). On the other hand the site of Tiszacsege-Homokbánya (county Hajdú-Bihar), near the river Tisza (Fig. 1), gave a more restricted number of stone artifacts. They were recovered from a 'pit-house' structure (MAKKAY pers. comm. 1993) only partly excavated by Drs. N. Kalicz and J. Makkay, who dated it to a transitional period between the Körös Culture and the early Alföld Linear Pottery Culture (ALPC), on the basis of the pottery typology (KALICZ-MAKKAY 1977.165.) The Méhtelek-Nádas lithic assemblage As mentioned above, the assemblage of this site consists of a high number of chipped stone artifacts, mainly obtained from obsidian and limnic quartzite, several polished stone tools and a few fragments of grinding stones. The chipped stones were previously examined by J. CHAPMAN (1986.31-52.) who wished to focus on two well-defined questions, namely, the existence of a possible specialized activity at the site and the variability between the obsidian and non-obsidian assemblages. These specific aims caused less space to be given to the illustration of the typology of the tool-kit and the technology of tool preparation. A re-examination of the sample, also including the polished and ground stone tools, was undertaken with the intention of concentrating on the above topics, considering that this is, at present, the only available Hungarian Körös Culture site with a sufficient number of pieces for the range of such an examination. The chipped stone assemblage was analysed following the typological list of LAPLACE (1964.) for the retouched pieces and the typometrical method of BAGOLINI (1968.) for the blanks. The results will be illustrated in detail in a complete study now in preparation. The whole assemblage is composed of 1710 specimens, 1676 of which are from pits and 34 from the flood barrier area. 1 The re-examination and study of the lithic assemblages from the sites of Méhtelek-Nádas and Tiszacsege-Homokbánya was carried out in 1993 thanks to a Hungarian Ministry of Culture Scholarship at the Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology in Budapest. I would like to thank Dr J. Makkay for allowing me to study the lithic materials from these sites and for kindly encouraging and helping me during the study. Thanks are also due to E. Bácskay, K.T. Bíró and V.T. Dobosi for their help in the raw material identifications and for the many reprints and books they provided me. I am also grateful to Professors J.K. Kozlowski and P. Biagi for useful discussion and advice, and to my friend B.A. Voytek who corrected the English version of the manuscript.