Gyöngyössy Márton (szerk.): Perspectives on the Past. Major Excavations in County Pest (Szentendre, 2008)

(8th/7th century ВС-late I st century AD) (1 st-4th centuries AD) (400-454AD) (454-568AD) (568-81 1/829 AD)

(895-1 301 AD) (1301-1526/1686)

• Klára Kővári 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5

1. Stone implements

2. Vessels from the pit containing the moulds

3. Plasticine counterparts of the articles cast in the moulds

4. The pit with the moulds

5. Vessels from the Makó settlement

Twenty-four settlement features of a settlement of the Early Bronze Age Makó culture were excavated in 2002-2003 on the outskirts of Üllő, at the intersection of the M0 Ring Road and Road 4. The various pit complexes lay scattered over the 10,500 m2 large investigated area, conforming to the loose settlement layout observed on the culture’s other sites.

Pit 5605 yielded a unique, sensational find assemblage of ten two-part clay moulds and a clay crucible. The artefacts lay in one heap and had most likely been placed in a bag made from some organic material (perhaps leather) before their deposition in the pit. The moulds served for casting socketed chisels, flat axes, shaft-hole axes and awls. Lying under the moulds were a large, broken shaft-hole axe and a rectangular stone polisher or grinder, both of which had probably been used for crushing metal ores and for adding the finishing touches to the cast metal articles.

The radiocarbon measurements for the pit containing the moulds gave a date in the later 3rd millennium (2470-2340 BC), corresponding to the late phase of the Makó culture.

Early Bronze Age moulds

from Üllő