Paluch Tibor: Egy középső neolitikus lelőhely a kultúrák határvidékén. A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Monographia Archeologica 2. (Szeged, 2011)

Maroslele-Pana: A Middle Neolithic Site at the Frontier of Cultures

74 PALUCH Tibor • MAROSLELE-PANA: EG Y KÖZÉPSŐ NEOLITIKUS LELŐHEL Y A KULTÚRÁK HA TÁR VIDÉKÉN 74 drier climatic phase in the area at the beginning of the Middle Neolithic and by a decrease in the water level of the Tisza River due to the reduction of winter or summer precipitation. The motorway route crossed the southern corner of the former settlement. The center of the site must have been situated north of the route. On the basis of the 1963 and 2008 excavations, as well as the field walking and the geomorphology of the site, the actual size of the archaeological site is calculated to have been 15 ha. Most Neolithic features were excavated on the western side of the motorway route, that is, closer to the water source. The two most distant Neolithic features were situated 250 m from each other. The excavated settlement area comprised up to 15 000 m

2 altogether. This 1.5 ha size makes Maroslele-Pana the largest excavated Neolithic site in the southern part of the Great Plain. Maroslele-Pana's importance, however, is not due to its size, but to the fact that Middle Neolithic settlement structure was seen on a large scale here for the first time. Furthermore, it provides information about an extremely short period on which only scattered information is available. This period coincides with the duration of occupation, that is, 25-30 years' time or the lifetime of one generation of the inhabitants. Ceramic typology One of the most clearly perceptible changes in the archaeological record of the Neolithic is the appearance of hand-made clay vessels alongside earlier containers made of organic materials such as wood, basketry, and bark. These clay pots were suitable not only for storing food but also for cooking. The clay gathered from the extraction pits found throughout the settlement was used not only as building material for the houses but also for making pottery. The pottery had two main components: the paste and the tempering material. Tempering is necessary if the paste is difficult to work with or shrinks and cracks upon drying and firing. In such a case minerals are added to the paste in order to temper the material. Thus, temper is an artificially added foreign material that improves the paste's quality and makes it more workable. Tempering also changes the vessel's firing qualities so it is used in order to make pottery more fireproof. In the period in question, usually sand mixed with organic material was used for tempering; in fine ceramics, however, pure sand was also used. Most of the excavated finds consisted of pottery fragments; altogether 12255 pieces were recovered during the excavation. It is noteworthy that few of the pieces could be reconstructed and identified to type (Table 1). The material is extremely fragmentary, probably due to the chemical composition of the soil. According to the thickness of the walls, vessel fragments were classified into three categories: coarse, medium, and fine ware (Table 2). Coarse and medium ware Most ceramic fragments (96% of the pottery finds) belong to these two categories. Tempering was usually undertaken by adding chaff and sometimes sand was mixed with organic material in the paste (Table 3). Tempering with organic material was the most common technology in the Early and Middle Neolithic of Hungary; this method was less frequently used in the Late Neolithic and, as research has shown, slowly disappeared. Sometimes gravel, limestone grains, and shell (in seven cases), were used as tempering agents. Only a very few pieces classified as coarse or medium ware were tempered with pure sand; this method was rather used in fine ware. The pottery fragments are mostly yellow, brown, grey, black or a combination of these colors. The overall characteristics of the coarse ware are shared by most pottery in the region in this period and thus connecting them to a specific cultural complex is challenging. Storage jars: A widespread pottery type of the Neolithic was the pithos-like storage vessel. Only the largest pieces are classified into this category. At Maroslele, 21% of the identified vessel types belong here. Storage vessels usually have only a few variations. Two main types could be distinguished: a high and less globular one and a smaller one with a rounder belly. The only vessel suitable for reconstruction was of the latter type; it was decorated with sprinkled slip. The walls of the large jars were usually decorated with pinching or barbotine. Pots: Most of the coarse and medium wares were pots and bowls (Table 4). Pots were usually present in the Neolithic; they appear in an unchanged form at the sites of various cultures and peoples. A few variants are distinguished within the group. Some of the pots might have been cooking pots, but it is almost impossible to identify them. Their use as cooking pots is somewhat contradicted by the poor thermal conductivity of organically tempered pottery; these are also particularly liable to abrasion and so they are not efficient and appropriate for cooking purposes. On the pottery fragments there is no sign of use in an open fire; however, they could have been used with heated stones or clay objects (THISSEN 2005). The pots are richly decorated. The thumb-impressed decoration is the most common type, which usually appears together with a vertical, horizontal or oblique Schlickwurf line. Fingertip-impressed rippling, a common decoration type in the period, occurs only rarely here, and was found only on the shoulders of pots but not under the rims. Bowls: Bowls were the most frequent finds among the pottery fragments. Within this type of pottery a specific category of biconical, carinated fine-ware bowls can be distinguished. Even without them, bowls with considerably-thick or medium-thick walls constitute more than 25% of the identifiable pottery types, and their actual number might have been even higher. Chaff is always present in their paste; sand was sometimes used for tempering. Not much formal variation is found; some of them are round and globular, others have curved walls and a conical shape. Decoration is not typical for this kind of pottery. Eine ware Fine ware makes up barely 4% of the pottery material (Table 2). Fine, well-washed and well-fired fragments with burnished or polished surfaces are counted in this category. Most of them were tempered with sand but in certain cases organic material is also present in the temper. Two types of fine ware were recognized in the assemblage based on the ornaments and decoration; some of them dislay ALP characteristics, others are rather typical for the Vinca culture. The ALP types are usually red, brown or grey, while the Vinca types have a black, grey or brownish color. Bowls: The most spectacular finds of fine ware are the biconical, carinated bowls of various types which were discovered at the site. Top-quality biconical pottery with a slight polish and refined, oblique, channeled decoration on the shoulder constitutes a unique group within the assemblage. This type usually has a pedestalled base. A low pedestal is usually characteristic for the Neolithic Körös culture while high pedestals are typically connected to a later period. The bowls are usually conical or cylindrical in shape. Within the group of conical bowls there is a special type where the body part above the carination line is small; these are called asymmetrically biconical. Such bowls are found in a relatively high number in this assemblage.