A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 37. (1999)

SIMÁN Katalin: Bifaciális eszközök Korlát-Ravaszlyuk-tető lelőhelyen

BIFACIAL IMPLEMENTS ON KORLÁT-RAVASZLYUK-TETŐ SITE Korlát-Ravaszlyuk-tető site (NE Hungary) has been known in the technical literature since the beginning of the century. Its cultural groupping and dating, however, has ever since been debated. The hill is one in a series covered with a limnic quartzite bank at the western foothills of the Tokaj-Eperjes mountains. The repeated collections resulted a great number of finds contaning naturally fragmented rock pieces, bifacially worked implements, flakes, blades, cores, upper palaeolithic type tools. The first excavations were conducted by L. Vértes and J. Korek in 1960. More recently, the fragment of a workshop site was excavated between 1983 and 1985, in 1992 and in 1994 by the author. Parallel to the excavation, the hill and the surroundings were also surveyed. We found traces of settlements from the Neolithic, probably the Copper Age, the Bronze Age, the Sarmatians and Árpádian Era. The excavations unearthed fragments of three workshop areas. The recovered material seems to be identical with the one collected a few metres westward of it, also on the plateau of the Ravaszlyuk hill. The bulk of the chipped material consisted of flakes and waste. There is a relatively high ratio of blades and the majority of the cores are also blade cores. One fifth of the implements (92 pp) are retouched flakes and scrapers. The larger part of the tools are of upper palaeolithic character. A special group is composed of bifacially worked pieces. Together with items collected west of the excavated area, 26 bifacial items have been collected. Two items are initial blade cores. Two pieces are similar to polished wedges, although they show no trace of polishing. Twenty-two pieces are asymmetrical scrapers and symmetrical leaf-shaped points or scrapers. The technical analysis of the bifacials exclude the possibility of their belonging to either the lower palaeolithic or the middle palaeolithic. They are also different from the Hungarian Szeletian (Szeleta cave upper layer) and the bifacials found so far in Gravettian sites. Only two possibilities remain, both of which rather plausible. One is the Szeletian described in Moravia. The demonstrated contact in raw materials between the two areas and typological and technical similarities support this cultural groupping. At the same time, there is also a striking similarity to Neolithic or rather to Early Bronze Age materials in Poland. We have, however, not found a single piece of pottery in the workshop level. Regrettably, there was no animal bone material either in the excavated area. It is certain that the bifacial implements and the whole of the material belong together. At the same time, we cannot tell how long the limnic quartzite bank and the level of the bank stood open. We know that after the abandonment of the southern workshop area, crioturbation folded the soil. In the eastern area, a dike opened in north-south direction and the archaeological material was washed into it. In the western area, where the workshop was lying direcly over the bank, the erosion of the rock continued. The question is, consequently, if there was really one period of workshop activity or several groups of various prehistorical periods used the same area, kept open by erosion. The material and date we have to data are not enough to solve this problem similarly to the problem of the cultural dating. Katalin Simán 44