Gyöngyössy Márton (szerk.): Perspectives on the Past. Major Excavations in County Pest (Szentendre, 2008)
Л Bronze Ágé urn cemetery at Biatorbágy (8th/7th century BC-late 1st century AD) (1 st-4th centuries AD) 1. Heart shaped pendants 2. Cast lunular pendants 3. Roll-headed pin among the ashes 4. Spectacle spirals 5. Cast bronze dagger 6. Vessel from the settlement 7. Bronze artefacts during excavation An area called Szarvasugrás near Biatorbágy was investigated in 2005. Altogether 293 settlement features and 115 inurned burials were uncovered during the excavation. The burial ground with the urn graves of the Middle Bronze Age Vatya culture lay on the south-eastern side of a hill. The graves lay close to the modern surface and some urns or the bowl covering them were damaged by erosion and ploughing. The burials formed smaller clusters, suggesting that one grave cluster contained the burials of one family and its relatives. Most urns contained calcinated bone fragments. Burials generally contained three vessels. The urns were usually covered with a bowl placed upside down and had a small cup typical for the period set beside it. Aside from pottery, the most frequent finds from the burials were bronze costume ornaments, placed either inside the urn or beside it. Interestingly enough, the greater part of the over 400 bronze costume ornaments and jewellery items were recovered from small pits under the urn, one of which contained 136 ornaments, while another yielded 86 pieces. In four burials, the ornaments were placed beside the urn, while twenty-one burials had the ornaments inside the urn. The most popular ornaments were spirals twisted from bronze wire, buttons with two perforations along the edge, trapezoidal bronze plaques with rolled end, spectacle spiral pendants of bronze wire, panpipe shaped pendants of sheet bronze and heart shaped pendants. The grave goods included a few cast lunular pendants, the fragments of a bronze wire bracelet and a roll-headed bronze pin. Weapons were represented by two cast bronze daggers. • Tamás Repiszky
