Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
36 WHAT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS TELL US Small cup (PMMI—TIM 51.18.2) In Kisvác a large, 68 centimetres tall, 84 litre amphora of the Group of Boleráz and a cow-headed pot have been found. The latter is a unique find from the age in Europe.These objects must have been used for special occasions. The combination of the pot with the cow-head implies a very important role that the animal played in the Late Copper Age, as mentioned above. Several objects dating from the Late Copper Age have been found in a former farm yard on the northern outskirts of Kisvác. The most important one of them is a fragment of a small flat clay statuette depicting a woman. It is an idol with a removable head. The head must have been made of some organic material (naturally it did not survive) and placed into the slot formed on the upper part of the torso. It must have been used for various Grain storing pot (PMMI-TIM 83.41.2) ceremonies and rituals. In the same place a shrivelled skeleton has been excavated too. The pose was that of a sleeping person or that of a foetus; the body was put into a grave with bent arms and legs, laid on its right side. The special feature of the Boleráz site in Szék Hill is the defence system consisting of three trenches. The pits excavated between and nearby the trenches contained attractive vessels of varied shapes. The use of bronze objects made of copper and tin alloy (or antimony) determined the beginning of a new historical era in the middle of the third millennium. The craft of bronze-casting was spread by the groups of peoples migrating from the east and southeast. Large-scale use of bronze started in the Mid- Bronze Age. This was the time when the massive cultural influences coming from the Balkans resulted in the development of a South East European-type of agriculture in the Mezőföld, along the Danube and in the Great Hungarian Plain. The communities engaged in intensive farming and highly developed animal husbandry established villages that had been inhabited for a long time; the resulting residential mounds (or tells) allow us to follow closely the residents'traces stratified upon one another. On the other hand, most of Transdanubia was characterized by a Central European-type of agriculture: after the depletion of the soil the inhabitants of the villages moved on and brought new areas into cultivation, which is why their settlements were shorter-lived and non-stratified ones. Vác had a varied and colourful history uuring the Bronze Age. At the beginning of the new era the Bell-Beaker people arrived here from Western Europe along the Danube. However, during the Early and the Mid-Bronze Age Vác was part of the culture dominant in the eastern and the northern parts of the country. The northern borderline of the area inhabited by the culture of Nagyrév in the Early Bronze Age as well as that of Vatya in the The shapely pots of the site of Szék Hill (PMMI-TIM 97.20.1,3)
