A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Archaeologica 5. (Szeged, 1999)

Florin GOGÂLTAN: The Southern Border of the Otomani Culture

MFMÉ - StudArch V (1998) 51-76 THE SOUTHERN BORDER OF THE OTOMANI CULTURE* Florin GOGÂLTAN ín memóriám Marian Guma One of the most attractive subjects for scholars studying the Bronze Age in Romania is the Otomani culture. Unfortunately, the high number of Romanian archaeologists who have emigrated — including Kurt Horedt, Ivan Ordentlich, Nicolae Chidiosan, Tiberiu Bader and Tudor Soroceanu — has created an immense lacuna in the study of this problem, and one which is difficult to bridge (GOGÂLTAN 1996). In consequence, only one single site of the Otomani culture, the Carei-Bobald tell, has been systematically investigated during the last twenty years (ROMÁN-NÉMETI 1990). Although I am currently more involved with issues relating to the Early and Middle Bronze Age in the Banat (GOGÂLTAN 1993; GOGÂLTAN 1995; GOGÂLTAN 1996a; GOGÂLTAN 1998; GOGÂLTAN 1998a; etc.), I have also started, together with Dr. I. Ordentlich, to analyze the unpublished find assemblages from Otomani and Sälacea. In the course of this work I became more familiar with the pottery typical for the Middle Bronze Age in western Romania. This is important for the study of the Otomani culture in Romania, primarily because the finds from earlier excavations and surveys have not been published in full. Much information about this culture comes from the research carried out by archaeologists working in Hungary, where the investigation of tell settlements is quite advanced.

1 The same holds true for Slovakia, where the material is in part unpublished.

2 In my study of the cultural relations in the Banat during the Bronze Age, I found that several theories had been proposed for the distribution of the Otomani culture. I. Ordentlich believed that the southern border of the Otomani distribution lay beyond the Mures river (ORDENTLICH 197L 32. Fig. l), a view that was shared by Carol Kacsó (KACSÓ 1972. 39), Tiberiu Bader (BADER 1978, 32; BADER 1982a, 29) and Vladimir Dumitrescu (DUMITRESCU-VULPE 1988. 66). In his 1975 monograph, as well as in his new synthesis of the Bronze Age cultures of Hungary, Prof. István Bóna stated that the distribution of the Gyulavarsánd (Värsand) culture extended to the Mures river (BONA 1975, 123, Verbreitungskarte II; BÓNA 1992, 16-17). A new map showing the most important archaeological sites of the Middle Bronze Age in southwestern Romania can now be drawn (Fig. 15), based on a series of excavations and the analysis of unpublished finds housed in the museums of Timisoara, Vrsac, Arad, etc., as well as on the basis of information collected from the secondary literature. It seems to me that the western part of the Romanian Banat (the Mures-Aranca zone) was inhabited by the population from which the Mures culture had evolved (SOROCEANU 1991, Fig. 2). The most representative site of this Middle Bronze Age culture is the Pecica tell (SOROCEANU 1991. 20-95, Pi. 1-40), suggesting that the core of the Mures civilization lay in the delta area of the Mures river, even if imports of this culture occur farther to the east. The greater part of the Banat was in the Middle Bronze Age inhabited by communities which are now usually identified with the Cornesti-Crvenka group (GOGÂLTAN 1996a, 46; GUMÄ 1997, 43-47, PI. * A shorter version of this study was presented at the conference "Die Otomani-Fiizesabony-Kultur — Entwicklung, Chronologie, Wirtschaft" held in Dukla (Poland) on November 27-28, 1997. 1 A comprehensive overview of previous research is offered by KOVÁCS 198S. New research results are surveyed in BRONZEZEIT. See also SCHALK 1992. 2 For a recent overview, cp. FURMÀNEK- VELIA CIK- VIA DAR 1991. Cp. also GASAJ-OLEXA 1992; OLEXA 1992.