Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 13 (1968) (Pécs, 1971)

Régészet - K. Zoffmann, Zs.: An Anthropological Study of the Neolithic Cemetery at Villánykövesd (Lengyel Culture), Hungary

ANTHROPOLOGICAL STUDY 31 Among the anatomical variations observed in the studied material, the frequent occurrence of the crowdedness and the resultant rotation of teeth is rather striking: establishable in 6 cases out of the 8 suitable for such investigation. The 4.55 per cent caries-intensity should be yet mentioned in connection with the teeth; caries occured in every case on the neck of the molars. By a comparison of the metric and morphological data, it can be established that the osteological material of Villánykövesd is rather homogenous, except for some smaller individual deviations (the skeleton of grave 24. may represent such an exception). All the skulls are dolichocranial, orthohypsicranial, imetrio-acrocranial. The low forehead, the elongately and flatly curving vertex, the lambdoid flatness, and the curvoccipital occiput are invariably well observable. The shape of the skulls in norma verticalis is a narrower to wider pentagonoid, in norma occipitalis they are houseshaped. The face is narrow, medium high, and rather angular owing to the comparatively slight bizygomatic breadth and the expressedness of the angulus mandibulae. The orbita are low, the nose wide. The position of the faciès malaris is in every case temporal, and a smaller to greater rate of alveolar prognathism san be observed on every skull. The skeletal bones are rather robust in both sexes; the average stature of the males is about 164 cm (n = 8, M = 163.88, s = 3.40, V = 157—167), that of the females 148 cm (n = 3, M = 148.33). The above characteristics agree with those of the »gerontomorphous Mediterraneans« described by J. L. ANGEL (1951, 6—7). The more robust gerontomorphous Mediterranean type (whose more or less diverging varieties are listed in literature as Atlanto-Mediterranean, Proto-Mediterranean, Palaeo-Mediterranean, Megalith type, Basic White, Eurafrican type), sharply delimitable from the gracile Mediterranean, occurred regularly in the early period south-east of the Northwest Anatolia and Mesopotamia, but finds deriving from the Neolithic — Aeneolithic periods, relegable to the Atlanto-, and Proto-Mediterranean types, respectively appeared in the Carpathian Basin and the neighbouring areas too. The temporal as well as spatial, nearest occurence of this type to Villánykövesd is in the osteological material from the site Lengyel (Hungary) also belonging to the Lengyel culture (VIRCHOW 1890; MALÁN 1929; NEMESKÉRI 1961). According to NEMESKÉRI (1961, 42) the Atlanto-Mediterranean type occurred also in the eastern half of the Carpathian Basin, at Tiszapolgár—Basatanya, belonging to the Tiszolpolgár culture from the Early Copper Age. The Atlanto-Mediterranean type predominates in the Neolithic Hamangia culture in Dobruj a, Rumania (NECRASOV — CRISTESCU 1965, 134—136); which culture, according to the archeological investigations, is — similarly to the Lengyel culture — of a southern origin.

2 There is a single significant deviation in the homogeneous material from Villánykövesd, in the case of grave 24. If the diagnosis of hydrocephaly is accepted, then, on the basis of both the morphological characteristics and the length and hight measurements, also this skull can be relegated to the originally dolichocranial, gerontomorphous Mediterranean group. Otherwise — acting on the brachycrany caused by the extraordinary breadth of the skull — an intermingling of the basically Mediterranean with some brachycranial type is to be inferred. The Central European occurrence of the brachycranial element in the Neolith — Aeneolith Periods is comparatively frequent (NECRASOV — CRISTESCU 1959; GHQCHOL 1964; NEMESKÉRI 1951), and thus its appearance in the anthropologically hardly invenstigated early periods of Transdanubia is also possible. At the same time, and according to certain other theories, brachycephalisation might have been brought about also by Cro Magnonian influences (KURTH 1958); in this case, the effects of the Cro Magnonian type population of the Linear Pottery culture (NEMESKÉRI 1961,. 40— 41), autochtonous in the Neolithic Age of the Transdanubia, are to be assumed. * * * As a summary, it may be established that the osteological material, deriving from the cemetery at Villánykövesd relegable to the Neolithic Lengyel culture of a southern origin, displays relationships of a southern orientation with the gerontomorphous Mediterranean type. The anthropological material obtained from the other site of the Lengyel culture (Lengyel) exhibits similar characteristics. The very fragmentary materials of the two localities are, owing to the merely partially excavated cemeteries, devoid of any representative character and so their more or less homogeneous state is still 2 Extensive morphological similarity can be established also in the case of some NeolithicAeneolithic skulls published from Bohemia by CHOCHOL 1964. CHOCHOL refrained from, a closer relegation of these Mediterranean-type skulls within the Mediterranean taxon, but infers on the other hand, some Cro Magnonian effects (e. g. Libice, Grave 2/24, Praha Nr. 2788— CHOCHOL 1964, 280.)