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

John Chapman: Social power in the early farming communities of Eastern Hungary – Perspectives from the Upper Tisza region

Social power in the early farming communities of ... barrow burial represented the end of burial rites, whether it concerns a primary or a secondary burial. There is, however, a paradox here: the full, open, public burial rites in front of the grave of a prominent male, set against the concealment of the body so deep in a „communal" individual monument as to deny his death. Another reading of kurgan burial concerns the re-integration of the body with the earth, so as to produce fertile offspring - a transformation marked by the swelling of the barrow. However, this transformation may also be read as a denial of death, since the proof of this is the fertility of the mound itself (I am indebted to Colm O'Brien for this reading). A third alternative is that barrows were conceived of as the primeval land rising out of the waters of Chaos, often literally in the inundated Alföld (thanks to Jon Davies for this suggestion). Here, the cyclical process of life - death - new life is dramatically symbolised by burial under barrows that imitated the ancestral homes of the Neolithic tells. By the same token, the extension of the landscape „settled" by the kurgans is an extension of ancestral land - a legitimation of settlement expansion in a period of agronomic change - the full implementation of the secondary products revolution after its initial 5th millennium impact on Eastern European communities (SHERRATT 1979) In summary, barrow burial represents yet one more solution to the problem of the polluting bodies of the newly-dead: the return to purity through abolition of the pollution. Denial of the importance of the body leads to a focus on the fertility recreated through use and re-use of the barrow itself, with its primary and secondary burials set in linear time. While the body may be unimportant, the identity of the deceased is memorialised in the barrow, that visual symbol of tell living. The final stage for consideration here of this longterm alternation of the domestic and mortuary arenas as nodal domains for social reproduction concerns the return to tell occupation in the Early-Middle Bronze Age (MEIER-ARENDT 1992.). The Bronze Age communities followed various strategies for inserting their new sites into an ancestral landscape already resonant with the symbolism of both domestic and mortuary mounds: resettlement of Neolithic tells (e.g., Herpály: KALICZ-RACZKY 1987.a.l06.); occupation of land previously reserved for burial (e.g., Berettyóújfalu-Szihalom: MÁTHÉ 1992.169.); or, more rarely, tell construction on virgin soil (e.g., Tószeg: BONA 1992.a.). The act of tell-formation so that one's village resembled an ancestral tell was, of course, a long-term strategy not available to those building new tells. In the Polgár Block, there is some evidence for location continuity between Late Copper Age and Earlier Bronze Age sites, with renewed occupations at 3 out of 6 sites (Fig. 8). Altogether, four tells are known and 5 flat sites; there is • significant off-site discard, represented by 25 single finds. The Tiszadob area has a particular concentration of single finds and very few site scatters; single finds are also noted on the tiniest of floodplain islands, near Tiszagyulaháza. Settlement becomes strongly nucleated around the tells of Kenderföld, Ásott halom, Bosnyák domb and Réhe tanya, each of which contains occupation both on and off the mound. Kenderföld's Bronze Age scatter covers an area of 16 hectares, while Bosnyák domb covers a smaller area of 3.2 hectares. The tell at Réhe tanya lies adjacent to a damaged Copper Age kurgan. All of the off-tell scatters are smaller than 0.25 hectares, perhaps an indications of single farmstead occupations. A dichotomous pattern appears to emerge for the first time in the earlier Bronze Age. In the sothern part of the block, widely-spaced tells appear with a few farms in between; in the northern part, one main tell is found, at Réhe tanya, together with sporadic low-density off-site discard. All the sites in the southern part lie on the edge of the wet farmland, whereas, in contrast, many of the Tiszadob single finds lie well back from the wetland edge. While Bronze Age and Neolithic tells showed general similarities in the elaboration of house construction, domestic artifacts and ritual paraphernalia, there was a fundamental difference between tells of the two periods. The standard Neolithic ritual practice of incorporating the ancestors into their living space through on-tell burial was extremely rare in the Bronze Age. This suggests a fundamental difference in social reproduction, based on the more equal development of both mortuary and domestic arenas within a tradition of strict spatial separation (or, following Heraclitus, you can never walk through the same tell twice). The mortuary domain in Eastern Hungary shows significant regional variation, with Nagyrév and Hatvan communities tending to bury the newly dead in small clusters near their tell, while Füzesabony groups created large, bounded cemeteries, some of them near tells (e.g., Tiszafüred-Ásotthalom: KOVÁCS 1992.96.) but mostly at some distance from the domestic domain. The most remarkable combination of domestic and mortuary areas occurs outside the Alföld at Dunaújváros, where a very large cemetery was planned to form a semi-circular space around one of the very few tells in the Vatya landscape (BONA 1992.b., VICZE 1992.). The cemeteries contain a variety of inhumations and/or cremations, with an emphasis on the newly dead within some form of community grouping. The implications of total absence of mortuary remains on the tells was that funeral processions led mourners to the graveside or to the cremation pyre, sometimes found within the cemetery. The development of mortuary rituals distinctly different from the Neolithic rites may Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 1994 85