Ljudje ob Muri. Népek a Mura Mentén 1. kötet (Zalaegerszeg, 1996)

Irena Šavel (Murska Sobota): Cultural Influences During Prehistory in the Country on the River Mura

Irena SAVEL CULTURAL INFLUENCES DURING PREHISTORY IN THE COUNTRY ON THE RIVER MURA The region which includes our country at the end of the neolithic period has, according to the findings from cave 1 at Bukovnica, been part of the cultural circle of the Lengyel Group. The pots with two ribbon handles under the outlet, bowls and vessels of conical and semicircular shape and bowls with thick upper rim, vessels with hollow stands, nozzled handles on vessels and plug-like projections as the only ornamentations on these vessels (t. 1-3) are characteristic features of the third degree of the Lengyel culture of the western part of Hungary and can also be found in the culture of Seca and Brodzany-Nitra in Slovakia. The majority of eneolithic material cultural relics of the Pomurje findings, however, are part of the Lasinja cultural circle. The prevailing shapes are semi-circular and biconical bowls (some of them with bellied hollow stands) or vessels, ornamented with smaller tongue-shaped applications or else with ornamentation characteristic of Lasinja culture such as engraving, shallow grooving, pricking of zig-zag lines or short incisions; further on there are numerous bellied pots, biconical pots with ribbon handles and conical lower end and cups or amphoras with cylindric neck and emphasized transition from the belly to the neck (t. 4-9). Similar amphoras, characteristic of the Lasinja culture lib—III, originate from the Slovenian and Croatian finding sites of the group Balaton I. At the settlement of Bukovnica the presence of the Retz-Gajary culture can be traced in the unadorned cup with a handle, a cup with a wide overhanging handle ornamented with grooved incision and a small trapezoid figure, richly ornamented with grooved incision (t. 10). Among the newer vessels there are vessel fragments, ornamented with pine-tree branch and grooves and vessel fragments with profiled mouth (t. 11) which are very often found in the Boleraz culture. Also during the Bronze Age there is a stronger connection with Middle Europe. Among the findings originating from the Oloris settlement at Dolnji Lakos, there are mainly bigger bellylike pots, pots of slight profile without handles, smaller mugs with ribbon handles below the mouth, bowls with a wide port, narrow bottom, cups with a stand; of the metal findings the most important one is a bronze needle with a seal head (t. 12-16); there are similar findings in the Virovitica group of Western Croatia, at the finding sites of Western Hungary (Balatonmagyaród-Hídvégpuszta and Hídvégpuszta) and the finding sites of South-Eastern Slovakia. The settlements of Gornja Radgona and Križevci are part of the settlement complex of the people on the Drava and Mura rivers which were holders of the so-called Ruse-Maribor cultural group. The thick, well-preserved cultural layers of the Gornja Radgona settlement prove that the south slope of the hill beneath the castle had been populated in a few phases. The first settlement horizon is characterized by belly-shaped pots with short cylindric neck ornamented by plastic projections, pots of oval shape with a slightly protruding mouth ornamented by a plastic rib, vessels with a slightly protruding mouth and bowls ornamented with inclined grooves (t. 17). The findings show the Bronze Age tradition and are ranked in the older phase of the urn-graveyard culture. In the second settlement horizon a more vivid ceramic shapes can be found such as conical pots with short neck, bowls ornamented by grooves, smaller pots with a high or a low conical neck (ornamented by plastic ribs with a garland motif), bowls ornamented with grooves, a few vessel fragments ornamented by 20