Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 4.-5. 1963-1964 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1965)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bóna István: The Peoples of Southern Origin of the Early Bronze Age in Hungary I–II. IV–V, 1963–64. p. 17–63. t. I–XVII.

found in the graves allude to the ways of life of a settled agricultural population. The ancestors of the Pitvaros people have entered the road of social stratification in the Copper Age already. Copper jewels alone would not prove this, the hiding of the Stollhof type golden disks, however, reveals the already developped dignity of a proest-chief, wearing a distinctive badge of honour of Ancient Oriental origin. Similar priest-chiefs may have led the Óbéba community or, to put it exactly, the Pitvaros people as well. The clans of the Pitvaros group were not equally rich. A chieftain's clan has been buried at Ôbéba, with two graves of priest-chiefs, the members of a g e n s equally very rich in bronze jewels were resting at Törökkanizsa. On the contrary, Pitvaros shows a strong stratification. Some people having golden lock-rings have been deposited in graves deeper than the rest, 5 to 6 graves yielded precious bronze jewels, the remaining ones had the average grave-furniture. Finally the cemetery contains 3 graves of adults, lacking any grave-goods, being the resting-places of the patriarchal slaves probably. The patriarchal character of the Pitvaros society is borne out by the fact that the majority of gold lock-ring and bronze bracelets are found in male graves; these people may have been the elders, the leaders, the best warriors of the clan. Though leading the clans they did not grow to a separate stratum above the rest, they were buried in a gentile order established in common. Also the patriarchal slaves were deposited together with the clan. Thus the people of the Pitvaros group lived in a gentile society being in the initial phase of stratification. History. During the Anatolian-Aegean Early Bronze Age a new culture made its appearence in Western Macedonia, along the Morava, in Western and North-Western Bulgaria, finally in Oltenia, bordered by Olt and the Danube, and in the SE corner of the Banate. The man of this culture lived in stable, telllike settlements and followed an agricultural way of life. Ha deposited his dead in a contracted position in open cemeteries outside the settlements. His pottery is charcterized by the two-handled vase, the depas amphikypel1 о n and the bowl with a slightly inverted ringlike rim. From this unitary cultural circle a northern group was separated. Its most significant settlements are Krivodol, Moravica, Deve Bargan, Ruse, Salcu\a, Vinca, probably also layers I and II of the Eastern Bosnian Gornja Tuzla.

zli In the Cooper Age this people let out 214 B. COVIC; GZMS 1960-61, 100-108. hords of settlers to the territories west of the Danube (C s á f о r d group), hence later as far as Bohemia, Central Germany, Silesia, nay Great Poland, connections and commercial ware included. The groups formed by the folk of the Pécel culture in Western Hungary, nay in the Bohemian Basin at the time of its extension from South to North are disappearing without almost any trace. (Their extension in the NW and NE is possibly connected with this fact.) In the basic area of the Balcans, however, they survive without any breach or crisis. In the eventful years after 1900 this people is attacked from two sides. Through the valleys of the southern rivers the Glina III-Gyula-Schneckenberg groups push forward to their conquest of Oltenia, Transylvania and the territories beyond the Tisza. Another attack, shaking the fundaments of the rule of our people on the Lower Danube probably, happened even earlier; the appearance of the people of the ochre-grave tumuli in the Roumanian Plain and its drive tc Oltenia and NE-Bulgaria, a people segregated from the folk of the Pontus pit-graves. As it is proved, the Salcu^a settlement was derelinquished at the time when this eastern folk appeared.

215 The remaining population of the tells tried to escape from the double pressure by moving towards the north, and it fled to the Tisza-Maros corner, surrounded by the numerous rivers and watery areas almost like an island. It is here that the most important features of their material culture, in the first place the twohandled mugs and the bowls with inverted rims, appear without any antecedents. They have brought their traditional jewels along: the golden disks representing the dignity of the priest-chief, the spiral bracelets and the trinkets. They carried also a number of other dorts of jewels of Anatolian origin, acquired by the contact with the peoples situated more to the South or through travelling tradespeople: the bronze diadem, a crooked variety of the ,

Zypriot" pin used by them, the bronze torques, golden lock-rings, shells and snails from the warm seas and finally necklaces of fayence beads. Wit the exception of the diadem, all these were unknown in the Tisza-Maros-Körös region in the Copper Age; they bear out the fact that the culture of the Bronze Age has been brought ready-made to this area by the immigrating Pitvaros folk. From its new territory of settlement the Pitvaros people pushed the folk of the Makó group, using cremation burial, a people which 215 V. DUMITRESCU, op. cit. 90-96. 38