Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

HALL 3-4 - The Bronze Age (2800-800 B.C.) (Ildikó Szathmári)

38. Bird shaped bronze vessels from Csicser and of unknown provenance. 10th century B.C. BRONZE AND GOLD HOARDS The rich, sophisticated metalwork of the Carpathian Basin has been preserved in the many bronze and gold finds, most of which were acquired by the Hungarian National Museum through purchases; only a small portion was recovered during professional excavations. Their majority was a treasure in the genuine sense of the word or a founder's hoard. Made up of articles ranging from a few dozen to several hundred, these hoards represented the accumulated wealth of a family or an entire community. The finds in them offer a reliable basis for the reconstruction of the costume, the armament and the beliefs of a particular population. The reasons for the concealment of these hoards differed in the earlier and in the later Bronze Age. The hoards deposited around the mid-2nd millennium B.C. can most likely be explained by the arrival of a hostile population (the Tumulus culture). In contrast, the 12th—8th centuries B.C. were times of peace and prosperity, without any major population movements, in which there was no apparent reason for local communities to conceal their valuables. Most scholars therefore agree that the hoards from this period can be interpreted as sacrificial or votive deposits.