A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1997-1998 (Debrecen, 1999)

Utak a múltba - Kivonat az M3 autópálya nyomvonalán feltárt régészeti leletek kiállítási katalógusából

Márta Sz. Máthé, Marietta Csányi, Judit Tárnoki, János Dani, Zsigmond Hajdú, Pál Raczky POLGÁR-KENGYEL-KÖZ EARLY BRONZE AGE SETTLEMENT FROM THE 3

RD MILLENNIUM B.C. The site lies northeast of Polgár, on the eastern bank of a former oxbow of the Tisza river. Finds from several periods were identified and a total of 876 archaeological features were uncovered and documented. The site was first occupied by the Alföld Linear Pottery culture, and later briefly by the Copper Age Bodrogkeresztur and Baden cultures. One of the Copper Age wells yielded a sacrificial assemblage of Bodrogkeresztur type "milk jugs". Most of the settlement features identified at this site can be assigned to the Sarmatian period. A description of this Sarmatian settlement is given in a later section of the volume. The Early Bronze Age Nyírség culture is represented by fourteen settlement features. These are extremely important since very few excavated settlements are known from this period and, in consequence, very little is known about the material culture of the region in this age. The simple round pits which often formed groups of three and yielded conspicuously few finds were unlikely to have been refuse pits. At the same time, the lack of habitations makes their interpretation as storage pits also doubtful. A few of the cylindrical pits, found near the former watercourse, were no doubt used for drawing water. A round pit, which at first sight appeared to be a well, contained various vessels, mostly with their mouth pointing downward, deposited in three distinct layers. About thirty, more or less intact vessels could be assembled from the pottery fragments. A few burnt animal bones were also recovered. These finds would suggest that this pit was in fact a sacrificial pit. One possible interpretation is that the remains of a funerary feast, the bones and the vessels, were "buried" in a pit with a special function. Neither can it be mere chance that the shape of the pit resembles a well since the pit might have originally functioned as a well, and have been re-used as a sacrificial pit only secondarily. The essential point seems to have been the formal link with water - perhaps with drinking water -, most probably reflecting a fundamental interrelation. At the end of the Ice Age the greater part of the Great Hungarian Plain was continuously or seasonally covered with water, and the annual floods, occurring about twice a year, no doubt signified dramatic events in the life of prehistoric population groups. The water from these large water tables was, more often than not, unsuitable for drinking water since they were periodically filled with organic substances, explaining why prehistoric populations dug wells for drinking water. This in turn led to a special relationship to certain special elements - such as water and wells - of the physical environment, and it is thus hardly surprising that wells and water began to play an increasingly important role in sacral beliefs, and, also, that they became an important part of rituals. The Early Bronze Age settlement features uncovered at the Polgár-Kengyel-köz site, and the stylistic features of the vessels in the assemblages recovered from them can be linked to the Nyírség culture which preserved and developed late Vuéedol traditions. At the same time, the Nyírség culture can be seen as the chronological and genetic precursor to the later tell cultures of the Early Bronze Age, namely the Hatvan and Ottomány cultures. In terms of relative chronology, the Nyírség culture can be assigned to phase 2 of the Early Bronze Age, with an absolute chronological position around 2500 B.C. 176