A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 36. - 1994 (Nyíregyháza, 1995)

John Chapman: Social power in the early farming communities of Eastern Hungary – Perspectives from the Upper Tisza region

John CHAPMAN Small open settlements both near and set back from the main watercourses are characteristic for the first farmers in the early 6th millennium CAL B.C. ; the sites showed frequent lateral relocation over areas up to 2 km long (e.g., Dévaványa-Katonaföldek: ECSEDY 1972.). Total excavation of a satellite Körös Culture site (Endrőd 119: MAKKAY 1992., BÖKÖNYI 1992.) indicated two houses each occupied over some 50 years, with nine intramural burials. A broad-spectrum economy with hunting, fishing and fowling as important as cereal cultivation or stock rearing suggests that the Körös Culture may be rooted in the local forager population. Although few Körös houses have been identified until recently, the domestic arena of social power is dominant in these settlements. There is no evidence for Holocene settlement of the Polgár Block (Fig. 2) of the Upper Tisza Project study region until the Early-Middle Neolithic transition (cca. 5200-5000 CAL B.C.). The earliest pottery found in the survey block is in the Szatmár II style. The onset of farming in the north part of the Alföld is traditionally dated to this phase (KURUCZ 1989.). A total of 14 scatters is known from the Polgár Block (Fig. 3), the majority in the southern part; no single finds were discovered. The scatters are well-spaced at usually 2+ km intervals. Most scatters are small (Polgár 18 - c. 25x15 m; Polgár 23 - 25x15 m); Polgár 35 has several concentrations of pottery within an area of 140x100 m, while Polgár 46 is defined as a small scatter of sherds within what becomes the largest Middle Neolithic site. Two sites lie on 'islands' in the floodzone (both on the Hodos island), five lie on the edge of the floodplain and two are set back from the edge. In most cases, site location provides equal access to 'dry' and 'wet' farmland'

. Only one area is not colonised: the Tiszagyulaháza islands. The settlement pattern of the earliest 'farmers' reflects an exploration of the possibilities of settlement in most parts of a riverine landscape. Four forms of mortuary practices may be defined for the Körös Group: skull burial, inhumation of disarticulated and partial skeletons, inhumation of articulated complete skeletons, and rarely, cremation of partial bodies (CHAPMAN 1983.). Most inhumations are deposited within the settlement, in pits or on unoccupied parts of the site, so as to include some of the ancestors into the local settlement context of the living. However, burials inside the house have also been identified as a significant rite at two Körös sites - Szajol-Felsőföldek and Szolnok-SzandaTenyősziget (RACZKY 1982/83.). The excavator commented that the interior fittings and contents of the houses had been left intact as funerary offerings (e.g., figurines, pottery, stone and bone tools). Here we have an instance in the Great Hungarian Plain, comparable to those found at Lepenski Vir, of the deliberate killing of houses by fire in the same act as the final burial of the deceased. The intersection of the end of the life-cycle of social actors, material culture and houses is deeply significant for the reconstitution of the social world of Körös settlements, marking either the death of a significant individual or a re-ordering of the whole community or both. In the Körös case as in the Iron Gates, death is so absolutely polluting that all associations with the newly-dead must be destroyed before the reemergence of the community becomes possible. This attitude to death may well be the cause of short-distance relocation of Körös sites, since social reproduction was not possible on sites polluted by recent deaths (pers. comm. M. Rowlands). Since the transformation of the deceased into the ancestor takes place wholly within the settlement, the subsequent re-incorporation of the ancestors into the social life that continues on an adjoining site is tightly structured to provide continuity between living, dead and ancestors. In the subsequent phase of Middle Neolithic settlement on the Alföld, a larger number of usually smaller sites is known from the early Alföld Linear Pottery phase (or AVK: KALICZ-MAKKAY 1977., MAKKAY 1982.). Occupation of sites later to become tells may begin from this phase but tell 'production' can with certainty be dated to the later, or Szakáihát, phase of the Middle Neolithic, from c. 4800 CAL B.C. The Vésztő mound was at least 1 m high by the end of the Szakáihát phase (HEGEDŰS-MAKKAY 1987.). In this phase, site nucleation begins to reverse the trend of previous settlement. Szakáihát sites, whether tells or not, tend to be fewer and larger than the preceding AVK riverside hamlets. In the Polgár Block, a massive increase in the number of pottery scatters is characteristic of the Middle Neolithic period, as defined by the local manufacture of Tiszadob pottery (a sub-group of the Late Alföld Linearbandkeramik: KURUCZ 1989.). 102 scatters have been identified, together with over 100 single finds (Fig. 4). The settlement distribution indicates expansion as much as consolidation. All nine Szatmár sites are re-occupied in the Tiszadob phase. A process of contagious growth may be noted, with 2 The abbreviation „CAL B.C." refers to calendarical dates before Christ, where „CAL" refers to the calibration of radiocarbon dates necessary for their conversion to historically more accurate dates, and „B.C'is the archeologically standard tenn for „before the Christian Era". 3 The temis „dry fannland" and „wet farmland" were defined by A.Fairbairn in relation to the weed flora from botanical samples from the Late Neolithic tell of Polgár-Csőszhalom (FAIRBAIRN in press). The weed floras indicate that crops cultivated near Csőszhalom were grown in two contrasting ecological areas - a wet zone, probably the Tisza foodplain, and a dry zone, probably the loess terraces. 80 Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 1994