Ilon Gábor: Százszorszépek. Emberábrázolás az őskori Nyugat-Magyrországon (Szombathely, 2007)

Kalicz Nándor: Az őskori agyagszobrászat kezdetei a Nyugat-Dunántúlon (Kr. e. 6000–Kr. e. 3000)

THE OLDEST PHASE OF THE NEOLITHIC WITHIN THE REGION (6TH MILLENNIUM ВС) Starcevo culture and its cultic objects in Transdanubia According to our recent knowledge the first farming communities arrived in south Transdanubia and Zala County in the first half of the 6"' millennium ВС from the direction of Croatia and others from the Balkans. This community was named the Starcevo culture after its first revealed site. The Körös culture in the Great Hungarian Plain, who lived in a more favourable geographical area, is related to the Starcevo culture. The number of Körös settlements today reaches 400. It is assumed that as a result of dense forests the settlers of the Starcevo culture did not find favourable living conditions in southern Transdanubia. The Starcevo sites known in south Transdanubia today is only 27, six of which are in Zala County. Finds of the Starcevo culture are only known from their settlements but their intensity is not even close to the intensity of finds from the Great Hungarian Plain. The Starcevo and Körös cultures represent the northern periphery of the Balkan-Aegean region. This northern periphery was closely connected to the southern origin area by its similar material culture and belief system. One of the evidences of this relationship is the appearance of figurines and their torsos among the finds. In the region examined in this paper there is one known figurine from Gellénháza (Zala County) with a broken head and steatopygic bottom. Apart from this there is only one known figurine head from the whole southern Transdanubia from Lánycsók (Baranya County). This head has a similar body to the ones from the Great Hungarian Plain and the Balkans. The body is long, flat, and undistinguished from the head. From above it seems that the figurines appeared in the Carpathian Basin in the early Neolithic at the same time when food production and pottery firing started. They were also made with the same technique as the vessels. The utilization of the figurines was probably connected to rituals associated with agriculture. It is also assumed that the figurines were made by people who were acquainted in pottery firing. The community used figurines in some sort of rite and then destroyed or broke them into several pieces and discarded the pieces in clay pits together with other broken vessels. This practice was repeated as a rule in like manner from the beginning of the Neolithic period until the end of the Late Copper Age. At Gellénháza, apart from the small torso, another find also came to light that can be associated with these rites and ceremonies. These are small objects with four legs and with a rectangular flat upper part onto which a small semi-globular bowl was attached. These objects are often designated to be altars, and it is believed by some researchers that they were not used in everyday household activities. Some researchers argue against this assumption and consider these objects as simple lamps. It must be noted that these objects always come to light broken from the rubbish pits of the settlements. In Gellénháza only the legs of such an object were found, but in Becsehely (Zala County) a reconstructable altar came to light. Altars were possibly used in houses, at the places of rites and in several other places although at this stage of the research their use cannot be clarified. It must be emphasised that the number of altar fragments found in southern Transdanubia and in the most closely associated Croatia are several times more than the figurines. At the small site at Becsehely there is another feature that was probably not part of everyday life. This feature measures 180 x 90 cm, it is cylindrical and 90 cm deep with a flat bottom. In this feature there were several parts of a larger and a smaller storage vessel and a whole pedestalled goblet. Apart from the characteristics of the pit and the positioning of the finds the large vessel deserves particular attention. On the opposing sides of the vessel there are the relief of two extremely stylized human figurines. They are portrayed from the neck to the belly and about 30 cm high. The humans are made of thinly applied ribs that were impressed by fingers. The arms of the figurines are bent downwards at the elbows. From the waist down there are hanging cords or fringes made from finger impressed applied ribs that represent some sort of clothing. The twin figures indicate the extraordinary nature of the large vessel. These unique human representations at Becsehely are identical to the ones found in southeast Croatia more than 200 km away from Becsehely. These analogies not only indicate a relationship between the two areas and the origin of these representations but also show that the belief system and rules underlying these representations were similar through a large geographical area. Large-scale excavations also proved that the number of figurines at each site not only depends on the scale of excavations but also on the demand of that community for making and utilising the figurines. Even though the production and utilisation of figurines were present since the Early Neolithic, with only small omissions, to the Late Copper Age these figurines had been present for about 3000 years. This, however, does not mean that a similar number of figurines were present within one culture or within any groups of that culture. The differences between the number of figurine is even more prevailing between the different cultural groups since their number shows high variability even within consequent cultural groups. Figurine making is associated with the beginning of agriculture and started in the Near East in the 9"' millennium ВС. In the Carpathian Basin figurine making was