Vaday Andrea – Bánffy Eszter – Bartosiewicz László – T. Biró Katalin – Gogältan Florin – Horváth Friderika – Nagy Andrea: Kompolt-Kistér : Újkőkori, bronzkori, szarmata és avar lelőhely Leletmentő ásatás az M+-as autópálya nyomvonalán (Eger, 1999)

The site of Kompolt, Kistér

365 THE SITE OF KOMPOLT, KISTÉR ment. These phenomena are suggestive of the following alternatives. Either these settlements were inhabited for a relatively short time, or settlement structure remained fundamentally constant during the Avar Period. Lithic material The site Kompolt - Kistér yielded a medium rich lithic industry with a basically Middle Neolithic (Linear Pottery culture of the Great Hungarian Plain) component. Bükk culture elements were found at numerous occasions in this lithic assemblage. The industry is blade based, containing elaborate forms with a small number of cores and moderate amount of flakes. Connections of the lithic industry can be traced, apart from the Linear Pottery of the Great Hungarian Plain and Bükk elements, in the Szakáihát and Zseliz cultures as well. The raw material spectrum corroborates this impression: the main raw material groups used are obsidian (Carpathian 1) and limnoquartzite (with a dominance of local elements from the Bükk and Mátra foothill regions). The site yielded the most important example of using the "Egerbakta type" limnoquartzite among the lithic industries known so far. The presence of Transdanubian radiolarite and Jurassic Kraków flint, together with the Mátra material and flake scrapers, indicate a relatively late chronological position within the Middle Neolithic Linear Pottery complex of the Great Hungarian Plain. Another component of the total lithic industry is formed by the stone utensils from younger (Roman Period Sarmatian and Early Medieval Avar) contexts. The Neolithic lithic industry seems to represent a single chronological horizon, while younger stone artefacts occurred in, to some extent, closed units. Materials from the most significant Neolithic units were analysed separately in order to find arguments for the homogeneity versus chronological diversity in the material. Analyses of the individual units indicate that, within reasonable limits, the Neolithic artefacts can be assigned to the same culture, i. e. the same settlement horizon. Animal bones The 300 features recovered from the site of Kompolt Kistér contained approximately 3500 animal bones from various periods. As is often the case with multi-period settlements, unfortunately, it was not always possible to precisely determine the chronological affiliation of the osteological material. The two best represented chronological components were the remains of a Neolithic settlement, largely dominated by ceramics from the Linear Pottery culture of the Great Hungarian Plain and a Sarmatian settlement (the percentual chronological distribution of animal bones from datable features is shown in Figure 56). Over one third of the material originated from disturbed features and mixed layers which makes their unambiguous culture historical interpretation dubious if not entirely impossible. It is predominantly the Neolithic and Sarmatian components of the Kompolt - Kistér animal bone assemblage that could be analysed in greater detail. Animal remains, in part, reflect the less disturbed natural environment of the Neolithic settlement where aurochs could be hunted and pig keeping was also an important form of subsistence animal husbandry. From the Bronze Age onwards, one may reckon with an ever increasing, massive human impact on the natural landscape. Animal bone finds from the Roman Period Sarmatian settlement (similarly to remains from the subsequent Avar Period) are thus indicative of a more "steppe-like", mobile pastoral way of life whose traditions are especially clearly reflected in the composition of animal bone assemblages from the Barbaricum, i. e. the Great Hungarian Plain, originating from the AD 2nd-3rd centuries. Characteristically, subsistence hunting became of negligible importance while the consumption of mutton and even horse flesh was widespread in Sarmatian times. Meanwhile, beef still remained the most important source of animal protein, its overwhelmingly dominant contribution changed relatively little through time. Due to its "nomadic" attributes, this form of Migration Period meat consumption (and thus animal keeping) probably fit into the increasingly deforested natural landscape in a way that was different from its Neolithic predecessor. Special finds from the site of Kompolt - Kistér include the right distal tibia fragment from a dromedary which, in all probability, ended up at the bottom of a Sarmatian well during the redeposition of Roman Period material. This animal may have been used for transport by either merchants or the Roman military at that time. Bökönyi reported on two Roman period (AD 2nd3rd century) camel skull finds from Dunaújváros Intercisa. Camel imports to the province of Pannónia (the western, Transdanubian section of the Carpathian Basin and modern-day Hungary) must have been associated with the stationing of Syrian military units in the local Castrum. These occurrences fit well within the series of Roman provincial sites in southern Germany and Switzerland where several camel remains were found. A jawbone fragment also came to light from the Roman villa site of Tác - Fövenypuszta. It seems likely that the rare camel bone at that site belonged to the Roman Period bone assemblage, since it was several orders of magnitude larger than a subsequent contamination by early medieval animal bones. At the Kompolt-Kistér settlement, in addition to its location at the bottom of a Sarmatian well, a similar, statistically sound argument also supports the hypothesis that the Kompolt specimen originated from the Roman Period, rather than the Avar Period poorly represented at the site under discussion here. Another unusual piece found at this site is a neurocranium fragment of a hamster that shows unambigu-