Tárnoki Judit szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 19. (2009)

Természettudomány és régészet - Alice M. Choyke - László Bartosiewicz - Telltale tools from a tell: Bone and antler manufacturing at Bronze Age Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom, Hungary

Természettudomány és régészet levels. The fill of the ditches contains material from the early and late Hatvan (Füzesabony) phases at the site, suggesting that they were no longer in use by the final, Koszider phase of the occupation. Altogether, 14 house levels, extending over approximately 400 years of occupation, were recovered.

8 This archaeological sequence may be divided into three major occupation phases at the site: the Early Middle Bronze Age Hatvan habitation layers representing the early and classical phases of this archaeological culture (levels XIVXI); the Middle Bronze Age late Hatvan (Füzesabony style) habitation layers (levels X-VI); and the late Middle Bronze Age Koszider habitation layers (material from the humus/ sub-humus and levels lll-l).

9 The different phases date by calibrated 1

4C as follows: Classic phase of the Hatvan period: 1750-1550 cal BC; Hatvan (in Füzesabony style): 15501450 cal BC; Koszider: 1450-1350 cal BC.

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0 Mostly, these sequences represent a series of house floors separated by fill layers, particularly in the central tell. The 437 artifacts made from various osseous materials were also sub-divided according to these archaeological phases, although 78 pieces fall into the category of stray finds because their provenience could not be precisely identified. Find material from the ditches surrounding the central tell were accompanied by fill, mostly from the earliest Hatvan phase mixed with some finds from the middle phase of the occupation. For this reason, these bone, antler and tooth/tusk objects have been tentatively assigned to the earliest phase at the site. The site material was not screened during excavation, a common problem in older museum collections in Hungary. Although the cultural stratigraphy was followed, only the material from recognized features was handcollected. There is a possibility that taphonomic loss due to secondary anthropogenic influences

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1 includes a significant percentage of smaller tools and that many of the more casual, less recognizable Class II tools

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2 remained in the faunal assemblage which is now no longer available for reexamination. Recent experience at the Bronze Age tell site of Százhallombatta—Földvár, has shown that more than 30% of the bone tools may be lost where regular screening with a minimum of 1 cm mesh screens but preferably .5 cm mesh screens is not employed and where the analyst has no access to the refuse bone material.

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3 Indeed entire classes of small-sized bone artifact types, either unknown or deemed very rare at other contemporary Vatya culture sites appear in large numbers during the course of excavations at this major Middle Bronze Age site on the Danube. 8 STANCZIK, Ilona - TÁRNOKI, Judit 1992.124-126. 9 STANCZIK, Ilona - TÁRNOKI, Judit 1992. 10 RACZKY, Pál etal. 1992. 40-41, 43-44. 11 BARTOSIEWICZ, László 2001. 12 CHOYKE 1983,1997. 68. 13 CHOYKE, Alice M. eí al. 2004. Bone tools: manufacturing technique and style Over the past three decades, the senior author of this paper has looked at bone tools from a number of Bronze Age sites in both the eastern and western parts of modernday Hungary.

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4 Enough information has slowly begun to accumulate so that more recent studies include comparative materials permitting recognition of technical style and formal types as they relate to broader regions and more restricted areas beyond individual sites as well as particular sites within a local hinterland. Even more information has been gathered since my first publication on the bone tools of Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom.

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5 These degrees of similarity or differences in the choices made by the producers of worked osseous materials at different Bronze Age settlements reflect both continuity and discontinuity in manufacturing traditions. The choices of which raw materials and techniques were chosen in individual households expressed varying kinds of social interactions between people living at this complex tell settlement. Bone manufacturing of everyday objects in the Middle Bronze Age would have been largely learned within the household, with rules and traditions of manufacture passed on from parents to children. The form and manufacturing of such objects tended to be conservative, their forms meant to conform to the narrow standards expected between related households within the settlement. This rather strict focus makes utilitarian objects manufactured in traditionally regulated ways means that such objects are particularly sensitive indicators of local affiliations. The technology of daily life reflects the existence of shared public knowledge

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6 of how to produce and use such objects within immediate households, a village or on the local region level. Tools made from osseous materials are also tied to the source of the raw materials, that is, the wild and domestic animals exploited by people at any given time. In addition to questions of relative availability of particular species, culture specific, symbolic or iconographie attitudes toward animals are also indicated in the way their bones are chosen for the production of tools and ornaments.

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7 There may have been popular belief about the properties of particular raw materials based on beliefs about the animals they came from or even the circumstances of their acquisition (for example coming from a hunted animal). Artisans, thus, always make a series of technical choices at most stages of manufacturing production from procurement and decisions about which raw material to 14 CHOYKE, Alice M. 1979; 1983; 1984; 1998; 2000; CHOYKE, Alice M. - BARTOSIEWICZ, László 1999; 1999-2000. 15 CHOYKE, Alice M. 2005. 16 INGOLD, Tim 1990. 17 See, for example, the meaning of species and skeletal elements in BIRTALAN Ágnes 2003. 359