Madaras László – Szabó László – Tálas László szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 8. (1993)
Kertész Róbert: Adatok a Nagyalföld mezolitikumához
Geographie setting The Zagyva Basin is situated at the meeting point of the southern piedmont area of the Mátra Mts. and of the Great Hungarian Plain. Being therefore a transitional area in the geomorphological sense of the word its surface is highly diversified. The average height in its lower part is 85-95 m above sea level, while in the northern part, ascending gradually toward the Mátra Mts. the average height is 100-120 m above sea level. The Zagyva, which is the main river of the mlcroregion running down from the W margin of the Mátra Mts. flows at present mostly in an artificial, controlled channel, in the axis of the region. At the end of the Pleistocene the Ancient Zagyva ran still at the W margin of the basin (Map 2.), later, however, a subsidence in the central part of the region influenced fundamentally the paleohydrography of the area. The local subsidence in the central part made the* Ancient Zagyva to shift gradually eastwards till at last the river had incised its present channel. Due to the continuous shift of channels of the Ancient Zagyva and of Tarna, a river running from the E margin of the basin west-wards, the region was rich in water. 17 The place-names at the flat part of the Lower Zagyva valley — a still subsiding area between the Zagyva-Tarna confluence and the river Tisza — like „Zsombékos" („Swampy" /field/), „Kapcaszárítódűlő" („Foot-cloth-drying field") or „Vízköz" (/Field/ „between waters" or „rivers") cherish the memory of inundations before river controls. The flood-plain of the Ancient Zagyva was full of levees bordering river banks and of numerous small islands hardly emerging over water level. At the end of the 18th century before the beginning of river controls and anti-inundation works, according to the apt comparison of F. Fodor the central part of the Zagyva Basin was like „the bottom of a lake where drier areas appear only as islands". 18 We collected the finds of the Mesolithic settlement of Jászberény II in such an „island", at present hardly emerging from the marshy, swampy level of the Early-Middle Holocene flood-plain of Ancient Zagyva (Photo 1-2., Map 3.). Topography The site called Jászberény II is situated at 6 km from Jászberény to the SE of the town (JászNagykun-Szolnok County), at the meeting point of the NE end of a field called Meggyespele, 84 which belongs to the town, and of the western part of a field called Puszta-Mizsei tanyák, to the N of the village Jánoshida. 19 The Mesolithic settlement features are concentrated in two smaller elevations on a N-S direction island bordered by the meanders of the already dried up Ancient Zagyva. As we have observed at another nearby site, Jászberény I, 20 here at Jászberény II, too, the Mesolithic lithic material together with the animal bones was not found over a larger contiguous area but they were accumulated in grey spots of 12-17 meters' diameter, the colour of which was different from the black recent humus. At Jászberény II we could localize so far four occupation spots in the vicinity of each other, in the edge of the island, near the water. In addition to microliths belonging to the younger phase of the Mesolithic in the site we collected over a large area also finds which did not take the pattern of the occupation spots; namely some atypic prehistoric ceramics and in a larger quantity Late Migration Period-Early Arpadian Age (A.D. 8-12th centuries) potsherds. The Mesolithic industry (Tables I-IV.) The lithic material of the site is in the Archeological Collection of the Damjanich János Museum at Szolnok, under the inv. № s 90.5.1.-90.5.481. Scrapers This is the most diversified group of tools, the majority of the tools is short, they are carefully manufactured. — scraper on a short blade (T.I. 7.) The distal end of the blade is flaked on a semicircular part in a fan-shaped manner, the left edge is retouched here and there, dimensions: 14,25 - 8,55 mm, inv. №: 90.5.40. — semicircular scraper made on a flake (T.I. 8.) The flake is chipped off obliquely, the working edge is manufactured by fan-shaped retouch, 14,6 - 15,3 mm, inv. №: 90.5.44. — nosed scraper (T.I. 10/A) The arched part of the tool was manufactured by scraping retouch to form a steep frontal distal end (T./.10/B), 21,7 - 19 mm, inv. №: 90.5.42.
