A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, 1982/83-1. (Szeged, 1985)

Régészet - Hegedűs Katalin: The Settlement of the Neolithic Szakálhát-Group at Csanytelek–Újhalastó

Fig. 12. Grave 136 An extremely interesting find was recovered from grave 3: a necklace strung from copper, jet and segmented shell beads (Fig. 9). A similar, but somewhat more sophisticated necklace (Fig. 15) was found in grave 7 (infant burial) uncovered in the course of the excavations conducted at Csongrád—Bokrospuszta in 1979.

62 The forepart of this necklace was fashioned from three drop-shaped beads carved from bone imitating deer-teeth among which were threaded barrel-shaped beads. On either side, these beads adjoined segmented shell beads intermixed with discshaped copper beads (six pieces altogether). Beside the copper awl found in a Zseliz context,

63 the copper beads from Csanytelek and Bokros are the earliest occurrences of copper artifacts found in Hungary to date. The discovery of objects fashioned from native copper in pre-ceramic contexts in Western Asia, on the territory of modern Iran, Iraq and Turkey during the past decades definitely prove that the discovery and processing of copper —• first the working of native copper as a stone, later its mining and smelting — was primarily evolved to the south of the Carpathian Basin, in Western Asia

64

. These innovations gradually spread to adjacent territories; it has also been proposed that they had 62 Csongrád—Bokros, Bokrospuszta (1979). Excavation Diary. KJM Archives 80.998.A. 63 B. Kutzián, I., The Copper Age Cemetery of Tiszapolgár—Basatanya. AH XLII. Budapest (1963) 333. 64 Muhly, J. D., Supplement to Copper and Tin. Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 46 (1976—77) 136. 30