Vadas Ferenc (szerk.): A Szekszárdi Béri Balogh Ádám Múzeum Évkönyve 13. (Szekszárd, 1986)

Pál Raczky: The cultural and chronological relations of the Tisza Region during the Middle and the Late Neolithic, as reflected by the excavations at Öcsöd-Kováshalom

The cultural and chronological relations of the Tisza Region during the Middle and the Late Neolithic, as reflected by the excavations at Öcsöd-Kováshalom PÁL RACZKY, BUDAPEST Hungarian Neolithic research has long clarified that the Transdanubian Lengyel culture is contemporary with the Tisza-Herpály-Csőszhalom complex in the Great Hungarian Plain {Bognár-Kutzián (1966) 286-277; Kalicz (1970) 37-49; Korek(1913); Gazdapusztai (1969) 134-137; Trogmayer (1969) 467-41S; TyzYov (1980) 328-330,358-363; Makkay (1982) 62-67,100-103; Goldman (1984) 53-67.). At the same time, both the Lengyel culture and the Tisza-Herpály-Csőszhalom complex represent a specific variant within the Late Neolothic culture provinces of Central and South-Eastern Europe. Thus, the study of their cultural and chronological connections can contribute to a better knowledge of the general interrelations of the Central and South-East European Neolithic. The tell settlement form was first introduced to Eastern Hungary by the population of the Tisza-Herpály-Csőszhalom cultures, alongside an economy which made this settlement type possible. This in itself links this area to the economic and cultural system of the Balkans, and at the same time, represents its northenmost extension (Kalicz (1965) 35-39; Makkay (1978) 181-182; Makkay (1982) 111-164). In contrast, Lengyel settlements are generally single-layered in Transdanubia, the Gödöllő hills and in Nógrád County (Kalicz (1984) 271-272; Kalicz (1985). The interconnections between these two culture provinces are illustrated by the finds from Aszód, where both the settlement and the cemetery of the Lengyel culture yielded finds of the Tisza-Herpály-Csőszhalom complex. The material from this site offered a new starting point for the re-evaluation of the relative chronology of the Lengyel culture and the Late Neolithic of the Tisza region (Kalicz (1970); Kalicz-Kalicz-Schreiber (1984) 315-317). Comparisons between the two areas were formerly impeded by the fact that the number of excavated sites from this period was until recently very small, actually restricted to the excavations conducted by János Banner around Hódmezővásárhely between the two World Wars. The large-scale excavations at Battonya [Goldmann (1984)], Gorzsa [Horváth (1982)], Vésztő [Hegedűs (1977)], Herpály [Kalicz-Raczky (1984)] and Öcsöd, however, enable us to draw a somewhat different picture from that suggested by earlier research on the Late Neolithic and its subsequent development. There is a general consensus that the emergence of the Tisza-Herpály-Csősz103