A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1966-1967 (Debrecen, 1968)

M. Nepper Ibolya: Szkíta kori leletek a Déri Múzeumból (Adatközlés)

Gyula Gazdapusztai The copper-age golden treasure at Hencida In spring 1965 a golden treasure was found in the fields of Hencida village, near the present bed of Berettyó river (Fig. 1.). The find was purchased by the Déri Museum of Debrecen. Trial excavations were made on the spot by the museologists K. Mesterházy and Gy. Módy, but this was unsuccessful in respect to further aspects of the treasure. Together with Károly Mesterházy, this writer conducted further excavations where Csanda

—Zalaváry's electronic metal detector was also employed, without any results. So this golden treasure, consisting of 12 pieces at present, must be regarded as a self-contained unit. The treasure consists of six disk pendants (Table I, 3, 8-12; Table II, 3, 8-12) and of six simple disks of gold foil (Table I, 1-2, 4-7; Table II, 1-2, 4-7). The total weight of the find is 160 g. The treasure of Hencida is closely related to the gold objects we have come to know chiefly from the cemeteries of the Tiszapolgár and Bodrogkeresztúr cultures of the Hungarian autochthonous copper age. The disk pendants belong to the group of copper-age goldsmith's craft beyond the river Tisza, to the type of of the Mojgrád-Tiszaszőllős finds, while the gold-foil disks find their closest equivalents in the cemetery of Tibava in Slovakia. We suggest to name this type the TibavaHencida Group. It has been found that in solving the chronological and historical problems of the Hencida treasure, the copper find of the early Tripolje type, uncovered at the Karbura river in Moldavia, is of great importance, since it contains the prototypes of both principal forms of this treasure. The golden treasure found at Chotnica in Bulgaria may also be of significance in solving the questions of this treasure. Analysing the golden pendants of the Mojgrád-Tiszaszőllős type of the Carpathian Basin, the conclusion may be drawn that the roots of its emergence go back to the culture of Tiszapolgár. The immediate predecessors are the Tibava finds. The golden jewels of the Carpathian Basin belonging to this type are provided with a suspension link, and four holes serve for stringing them, apart from a very few exceptions. The finds of the North-East Balkans have no suspension links and have two perforations as a rule. The gold-foil disks of the Tibava

—Hencida type can be traced back to the shell and bone disks of the neolithic and the copper age

, and may be interpreted as the precious-metal variety of the latter. This type shows substantially more marked archaic features than the gold disks of the Stollhof-Csáford type, known from the copper age and surviving to the early bronze age. While in the development of the disk pendants of the Mojgrád-Tiszaszőllős type, presumably showing anthropomorphous portrayal, we must take into consideration the presence of southern (Aegean-Anatolian) stimuli, the Hencida-Tibava group can be classified as a form developed in the territory this country, or, in a broader sense, in the Carpathian Basin. It appears that all pieces of the find had been cut from larger gold-foils, and that they show the traces of use (stringing), The raw material of the finds has not been tested, but on the basis of the colour of this gold and in accordance with the view accepted in the literature, we regard them as originating in the Carpathian Basin (Transylvania). In our view, this find was not an underground depot concealed for sacral or commercial purposes. We see in it the personal property, the "treasure" of the members of outstanding economic status in a smaller community, concealed underground during the flight from the assault of an enemistic group. To support this view we have referred to the circumstance that the islet "concealing" the treasure was an ideal shelter, surrounded by water, swamps, at every side. In the following we surveyed the general picture of copper age evolution to decide whether it is justified to assume such a general attack at that time. 4* 51