Janus Pannonius Múzeum Évkönyve 14-15 (1969-70) (Pécs, 1974)

Régészet - K. Zoffmann, Zs.: Anthropological Analysis of the Cemetery at Zengővárkony and the Neolithical Lengyel Culture in SW-Hungary

ANTHROPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE CEMETERY AT ZENGÖVÁRKONY AND THE NEOLITHICAL LENGYEL CULTURE IN SW-HUNGARY ZSUZSANNA К. ZOFFMANN We have only few cemeteries in Hungary which, considering the number and preservation of their osteologic material, could give a representative value of the taxonomic and paleodemografic composition of the different populations who developed their individual cultures here and lead thus to a better anthropological understanding of the prehistoric people in Hungary. This fact is due partly to the prehistoric burial customs (for instance the culture of Koros: sporadic graves dug on settlements) and partly to the inadequancy of the archeological Figure 1. excavations, i. e. the defective preservation of the anthropological material. Accordingly we know only sporadic graves of the earliest Transdanubian neolithic culture — the Linearceramic — and its anthropological data have not yet been studied in detail. J. NEMESKÉRI (1961) suggests that the material at our disposal shows Cromagnoid characteristics. From the time of the Lengyel culture which followed it in chronologic order (2600—2300 B. C), the change in the burial customs (graves round the settlements, groupes of graves forming extensive cemeteries) made it possible to unearth larger and smaller sections of cemeteries (Lengyel, Villánykövesd, Pécs várad-Aranyhegy, Ágostonpuszta), but the greatest number of graves was found near Zengővárkony. The excavation works in the cemetery surrounding the settlement were conducted by J. DOMB AY (1939, 1960) who divided the graves with contracted skeletons in 14 burial groups (Table 1.). Owing to the very strong erosion of the area mentioned by J. DOMBAY, as well as to the menner of excavation : network of trenches and only partial exposure of the cemetery, not one of the burial groupes may be considered as completely exposed. On the basis of the map of the cemetery we may assume that two thirds or at least half of the cemetery are still unearthed. This fact and the little effort made to preserve the anthropological material of its graves greatly diminishes the representative value of the cemetery. In so far as our estimations concerning the full-size of the cemetery are correct, the osteologic series at our disposal do not represent but 4 to 6 per cent of the complete population of Zengővárkony. Table 1. shows the preserved anthropological material from the exposed graves of the different burial groupes in percentage distribution. The data show clearly that this series of only 64 items represent but very poorly the population of Zengővárkony, and it has even less values if we divide it among the groups. But even so it is certain that from the published (Alsónémedi — NEMESKÉRI 1951), the partly published (Ti-