Agria 39. (Az Egri Múzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2003)

Domboróczki László: Radiokarbon adatok Heves megye újkőkori régészeti lelőhelyeiről

with references to the spirit of their ancestors and other potent forces.

29 Shortly after the house had been built and the site occupied, the pits which had been dug were filled in. During the period in which they were left open, the clay edges of the pits would have been worn away by the forces of erosion and precipitation. However, once the house was finished the pits outlived their use and were consequently filled in, having got in the way of people and animals alike. The surrounding humus and any refuse which needed throwing away was used to fill in the pit. Thus, the humus containing older ceramic fragments lying loose on the ground ended up in the pit along with more recent rubbish, like for example vessels which had only recently got broken. Indeed, any burnt house debris from burnt down houses would have found its way into the pit in a similar way. In such cases, however, a certain amount of cultic ceremonial might have been attached. One cannot discount the possibility that the closing of the pits may have been as much a part of a ritual as when they were dug. It may have been that some of the remains in the pit did in fact take a deliberate route there.

30 In time pit contents settled and new finds were trodden into the surface. Eventually the pit became a nest, with animal movement causing ever newer fragments to find their way there. We can therefore suggest, with some justification, that not all the fresh refuse made its way into the pits and that probably there was an awful lot of rubbish washing about the place at ground level. Collection and selection procedures took place on a pit to pit basis, larger fragments forming the basis of the reassembled vessels. These, however, only accounted for but a small percentage of the fragments which were found, the vast majority being the tiny fragments. Theoretically all the vessels should be there on the site, a large proportion of which were collected together in fragment form during the course of the excavations. However, such was the degree of disintegration and the sheer number of missing fragments involved, that piecing together the vessels was impossible. Whilst shedding light on the shortcomings in the restoration work, since the proportion of reconstituted items as well as the established contacts between the pits are much lower than one would normally expect, it nevertheless helps us to understand the functioning and the filling in mechanism of the pits. The fragments belonging to the many incomplete vessels show, however, that these were not primarily refuse pits and that they were not used for the continual accumulation of rubbish. As has already been mentioned, earlier we supposed, in the light of the regular settlement plan, that the settlement objects found all dated from the same period. Unfortunately it was a hypothesis which was not supported by the С

14 data. Now the piecing together of the Gubakút material has been completed we have to acknowledge there is indeed very little data suggesting that everything is from the same period, on the contrary, the restoration data seems to confirm totally the settlement history outlined by the С

14 dates. At first glance the diagram outlining the ceramic connections (maps 5-6) appears to show that everything is interrelated. However, on closer inspection it becomes apparent that pit 51. (map 2.) on the 1st western settlement row and pit 135 (map 5) on the 2nd eastern settlement row have the closest relationships with the other pits. In addition, the relationship is such that it was from these two pits that the greatest number of vessels (the most fragments) were found, whilst the rest of the pits accounted for a smaller number (fewer fragments). So it was we came to the conclusion that whereas those vessels made up of larger fragments were generally fresh refuse deposited deliberately as waste so as to fill 29 See M. Eliade's suggestions regarding the creation of a microcosm: ELIADE, Mircea 1996.23-30. 30 CHAPMAN, John 2001. 155-156., BÁNFFY Eszter 1991. 202-203., BÁNFFY Eszter 2002. 211-212. 16