Majorossy Judit: A Ferenczy Múzeum régészeti gyűjteményei - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, D. sorozat: Múzeumi füzetek - Kiállításvezetők 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Dr. Ottomány Katalin: Kelták kora
burial customs, pottery types and belief systems. An increasing number of bronze artifacts are known from this period, and not only weapons, jewels, and symbols of power, but also the objects of everyday life (axes, sickles, awls, pins, and so on). The bronze findings come to the light especially from hoards and treasure hoards, from the socalled bronze depots, that were once hidden in the ground. The reasons for hiding them have been long debated. Among the supposed reasons one both finds the hostile attacks and the travelling metallurgists hiding their stock of raw material. Recently, the sacral and representative purpose of the elite is assumed as the main reason for hiding the bronze treasure which has been found in growing number. Thanks to the current research of the last years and decades, much more is known about the several large cemeteries (Budaörs, Érd, Maglód, Solymár, Szigetcsép, Szigetmonostor, Tököl) and settlements (Budaörs, Érd, Pomáz, Százhalombatta, Szigetszentmiklós) of the Urnfield culture in Pest County. As for burial rites, cremation became the exclusive practice in that period. The cremated ashes were often put into a vessel (urn cremation), but other grave goods could be placed into or next to the urn, too. In addition, the un-urned cremation had several types: the burnt ashes were either put next to uninjured, complete vessels or they were scattered over the whole surface of the grave pit. It was also a common practice that the vessels were put into the grave in a deliberately broken condition. Such burials were also excavated, where it can be detected that smaller or larger pieces of the funerary pyre (so not only the burnt ashes) were put into the graves. In some cases intentionally broken sherds were placed next to the whole, unbroken pots. The graves might have been marked somehow on their surfaces, because even in case of the larger cemeteries with a long life-span they rarely cut each other. One can find in almost every group a symbolic grave (an empty one or a pit without bones/cremated ashes, but with grave goods). In such cases it can be supposed that despite the fact that the body of the dead person was probably not available, the community wanted to commemorate its member in the cemetery. These people gave not only some food and drink in vessels to their dead for the journey to the other-world, but various parts of domestic animals, too. Beside the daily objects (e.g. spindle-whorl, polisher pebble, and so on), they often buried by their dead objects carrying some kind of a symbolic meaning. Such objects were, for example, the so-called bootshaped vessels and the so-called “magic tools” (moon- and sun-shaped objects made of clay with a handle), which could have had a function in magical practices, during ceremonies connected to agriculture. Csizma alakú edény, Urnamezős kultúra / Boot-shaped vessel, Urnfield culture „Varázseszközök’’, Urnamezős kultúra / “Seduction tools”, Urnfield culture 31
