Bagi Gábor et al. (szerk.): Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 17. (Szolnok, 2008)
Régészet - Cseh János: Jászfelsőszentgyörgy Túróczi-tanya szkíta telep
JÁNOS CSEH JÁSZFELSŐSZENTGYÖRGY-TÚRÓCZI-TANYA (ARCHAEOLOGICAL REMAINS OF SETTLEMENTS FROM THE COPPER AGE TO THE MIGRATION PERIOD) Two generations ago, in summer of the year 1961 — as one of the important episodes or events in the activity of the county musem in that year — archaeological excavations happened near Jászfelsőszentgyörgy at the Túróczi-tanya to be not far off Jászberény town, carried out by Zsolt Csalog. The site was on the north-eastern confines of the village lying on the right bank of the Zagyva river, along the high-terrain escorting the flood plain; I myself too was here in spring of2003.1 have felt to deal with this so to say „dust-covered” and also somewhat forgotten excavation as grateful and fruitful task or subject. The archaeologist organizing the works opened four surfaces being more or less separated (surface I-1I-III and a trial trench), by a smaller loam-/sand-pit where finds were found. Total, general surface of these ran to nearly 90 m2, with nineteen excavated features or so pertaining to settlements (A-R), for the most part pit-like vestiges. On the rising ground resp. in the neighbourhood after the pottery-finds in four — conditionally five-six — historical periods there had susbsited-existed settlement: in the Middle Copper Age (ceramic with furrow-stitch decoration, first half of the 4th millennium B.C. in the modem chronology), as well as in the Scythian (6th-4th centuries B.C.), Sarmatian (2nd-4th century A.D.) and Avar times (7th-9lh century A.D.) In those days and even today first of all the material from the Copper Age and that from the Middle Iron Age had resp. have some relevance; I concerned myself par excelence about the Scythian settlement-finds, when I took up the archaeological objects. So that followings will restrict themselves only to these: to three-four features dug out and their finds. In terms of the settlement archaeology eminent, outstanding results of the unearthings in Jászfelsőszentgyörgy are two not too deep, trough-like feature after the description, situated merely a few metres a part (A and B). One excavated as first gives more informations relating to the house-building. It had oval format and roughly 400x300 cm size, perhaps with remain of entrance by the south side. On the floor-level to be more solid or compact the archaeologist noticed vestiges of firing (in two flecks) and many stake-places. Contrary to these dwelling houselike traces one or two indiggings were simple pits which are not worth talking about them, leastways here — so to say, but by no means in pejorative sense. In the pottery dated back to the middle period of the Iron Age, the wheel-turned ones fall much short of the hand-made fragments (taking A and B features, the formers are amounting to 10-15%, the latters to 85-90%). The Scythian potters making the earliest wheel-thrown earthenwares in the Carpathian Basin produced on our site along the Zagyva the well-known forms, types: mugs with high handle and biconic form (the beautiful/handsome pandan of the former has been recently published by the research) — from the rims other type is to be scarcely identificated. Studying the coarse pottery being in abundance, already more shapes can be separated. Thus there are bowls with inverted rims, among them an entire, full profile too. A further group consists of vessels in barrel forms (faßförmig in German), provided with charac- teristical plastic appliqués, i.e. with knob-lug or imprinted rib. That shards, from which we can conclude Villanova- ums, are perhaps not so much typical. Forerunner of the following period, the Celtic world is a graphited rim, fragment of pot — it could get here also from some Late Iron Age settlement being not far away. Even spindle- whorls, whet-stones, grinding/milling stones, slag and iron slag?, flakes/splinters, sling-stone?, daubing lumps, animal bones appertain to the archaeological material of the Scythian Age, with a certain probability, which are ordinarily usual finds from settlements. Present resume is closed by me, that the reader may find the literature (to be said full) of the site at Túróczi-tanya in Jászfelsőszentgyörgy and dated from the 6lh-4th centuries B.C. in the yearbook Tisicum, volume XV (2006). (Translated by János Cseh) 117
