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

Domboróczki László: Radiokarbon adatok Heves megye újkőkori régészeti lelőhelyeiről

in fact a recent invention having seemingly been plotted along the previously known distribution boundary with the help of a map produced by N. Kalicz."

3 The barrier also manifestly fails to coincide exactly with the most important green corridors marked out by R. Kertész and P. Sümegi,"

4 not coinciding with climatic belts, vegetation belts or the geological limits and by the author's (minimum) section of these,

115 factors which have yet to be marked on the map. If new sites are found, this will obviously mean that the barrier will have to be changed accordingly. So it is that the barrier does not really help us to get to the bottom of the Neolithisation issue. Indeed, by using the sites themselves to dictate the extent of the barrier the authors have turned the logic of their argument upside down."

6 Rather, whilst the environmental causes did amount to an important limiting factor, they did not pose an unbreachable obstacle. What is more, during the ALP period a population living in a similar manner found it quite possible to live north of the barrier. How similar these people north of the barrier were to those of the Körös Culture, and not cardinally different as R. Kertész and P. Sümegi"

7 stated, we would like to argue in the following. The idea that the existence of ALP Neolithic settlements on the northern Alföld can be traced back from the Körös Culture without any significant involvement from the indigenous local population was raised by P. Raczky, J. Korek and I. Bona a good two decades ago."

8 Although as a theory it was subsequently forced into the background, some recent arguments have sprung to its defence. If we have a look at these new findings from the ALP period, particularly those from the earliest Szatmár period, we can see that there are an unusually large number of similarities between the ALP and the Körös Cultures, certainly many more than were previously thought. Indeed, in the case of the Körös Culture and the Szatmár Group the large number of correspondences point overwhelmingly to a (primarily ethnic) continuity, whilst evidence of local cultural transformation (namely sites containing a mixture of Mezolithic-Neolithic finds) is completely lacking."

9 It is with an 113 See: KALICZ Nándor-MAKKAY János 1977. map 2, as well as the up-dated version: KALICZ Nándor 1995. 25. Which corresponds nicely with the barrier map: KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 1999a. 18., KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 2001a. 237. 114 KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 1999a. 18. 115 KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 1999b. 68-70., figs 3., 4., 5., KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 2000b. 408-409. 116 KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 19991. 19., KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 2001a. 237. 117 KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 1990a. 19., KERTÉSZ Róbert-SÜMEGI Pál 2001a. 237. 118 RACZKY Pál 1980. 14., RACZKY Pál 1983. 189., RACZKY Pál 1986. 29-30., KOREK József 1983. 25-26., BÓNA István 1986. 63-64. 119 There are three possible scenarios for the border zone between the Mezolithic and Neolithic populations. In the first the indigenous Mezolithic population became strongly dependent on the Neolithic population before actually becoming one of their number. The second possibility is that they entered into a relationship which, whilst being of mutual benefit, allowed them both to keep their identities, whilst in the third case the indigenous population managed to avoid the foreign settlers altogether (The Dennel and Verhart models: VERHART, Leo B.M. 2000. 17., 227.). In the first two cases we would expect to find proof of cultural exchange at the Mezolithic and Neolithic sites. For the Neolithic arrivals animal skin, raw materials, as well as labour and sexual services would have constituted exchange, and from these we can only really expect the stone materials to have survived at the Neolithic sites. At the Mezolithic sites, however, one would expect to find Neolithic tools: stone hatchets, vessel fragments and the remains of domestic 34