Tálas László szerk.: The late neolithic of the Tisza region (1987)

Hódmezővásárhely-Gorzsa (F. Horváth)

HODMEZOVASARHELY-GORZSA SOOZS* ~*W* szKSifti:"*--™^ «t£ZZá_ *•: \ Groundplan of house complex 2. Level 10, phase C, Tisza culture IQ this phase have not yet come to light, only pits opened for the extraction of clay and later reused as refuse bins. Sections of a 5 m wide ditch with V-shaped cross-section that had probably enclosed one part of the settlement have been exposed. The complete excavation of this ditch remains a task for future campaigns. It cannot yet be established whether another straight-sided, 0.5 m wide and 1 m deep ditch into which were driven 20 to 30 cm thick posts at intervals of 1 m and running parallel to the other ditch had been a palisade fence belonging to the first ditch or to some other feature. Nonetheless, the presence of a ditch enclosing the settlement or rather, a part of it, is noteworthy even if the exact relationship between the ditch and the settlement yet remains to be explored. There is accumulating evidence that the Late Neolithic settlements of the Great Hungarian Plain had entirely or in part been enclosed by ditches (Gorzsa, Tápé-Lebő, Kökénydomb) (HORVÁTH 1985, in press), similarly to other contemporaneous settlements of neighbouring cultures. These ditches already make their appearance in the preceding Szakáihát period (e.g. at Csanytelek), and their origins and presence in the Tisza region is suggestive of deeper cultural interconnections (MAKKAY 1985). The settlement levels assigned to phase C accumulated to a thickness of 1 m on the average and represent the longest 35