Kovács Tibor - Stanczik Ilona (szerk.): Bronze Age tell settlements of the Great Hungarian Plain I. (Inventaria Praehistorica Hungariae 1; Budapest, 1988)
Tibor KOVÁCS: Review of the Bronze Age settlement research during the past one and a half centuries in Hungary
1926-1928 excavations at Nagyrév-Zsidóhalom were directed jointly by F. Tompa and C. C. Clarke. 34 Tószeg became really world-famous owing to these excavations and through V. G. Childe's and F. Tompa's publications. 35 Lajos Marion's premature death prevented him from publishing the result of his fieldwork, not only to the great loss of Hungarian archaeology, but also to the loss of Central European Bronze Age studies, since the Tószeg layer sequence became an - often exaggeratedly exclusive-chronological base in spite of the fact that only a fraction of its features and finds had been published. This also had its effect on settlement archaeology since there was no practically available model of what to look for, what to observe and how to document the features noted in the course of the excavation of a Bronze Age village. This is one of the reasons why the excavations on a number of major sites between the two world wars have only a restricted informational value. Suffice it here to quote Pákozd-Vár 36 and Solymár-Várhegy. 37 During these decades systematic excavations were mainly conducted by J. Banner and F. Tompa. The former's interest was directed predominantly at the Neolithic, 38 whilst Tompa's activities are, in a certain sense, contradictory. Beside the excavation of a number of cemeteries, 39 he also investigated several settlements. Beside Nagyrév and Lengyel mentioned in the foregoing, he also excavated the site of SarkadPeckes Vár (1925), 40 Füzesabony-Öregdomb (1931, 1935-1937) 41 and Hatvan-Strázsahegy (1934-1935), Szécsény-Benczurfalva (1934), Tiszakeszi-Szódadomb (1936), and Bárca (Barca, 1941), but he only published a comprehensive report of his Hatvan excavations. 42 His premature death prevented him from publishing the results of his extensive fieldwork, but it would also appear that his abilities and personal interest also predestined him for writing comprehensive monographs and studies with a European perspective. 43 His previously quoted study offers a detailed survey of the structure and organisation of the Hatvan village, the building technique of its houses and the chronological implications of the multilayer settlement. In other words, he was interested in all that bore indications of past lifeways of the occupants of a Bronze Age village. However, since his historical attitude dominates in his works, the forced reinterpretation of his data often become metaphysical-as shown by his interpretation of fortifications 44 -, and thus his settlement excavations and their interpretation did not contribute much to the advance of Bronze Age research. Tompa's published sections — together with those surviving in manuscripts —often arouse doubt in the critical readers of later ages, especially as regards his recognition of buildings. Since the excavations at Alcsut, i.e. in the century that elapsed between the 1840s and 1945 a great wealth of finds were amassed in various museums of Hungary that originated from the excavation of various settlements. Only a fraction of this data reached the mainstream of archaeological research through publications. Surprisingly enough, this negative tendency was also apparent when, at the turn of the 1930s, lengthier Bronze Age studies were published. It was thus not only the lack of preserving and refining the excavations techniques introduced by M. Roska and L. Márton, but also the attitude of the interwar period that contributed to the fact that settlement archaeology could not make use of the possibilities offerred by the Bronze Age data base. These negative effects are amplified by the fact that in the course of several decades —and especially during World War II-, a number of important documents were lost, and a number of finds and assemblages became mixed up or lost forever. The identification and reconstruction of a part of these mixed and lost finds had begun already in the 1950s and is still in progress today. 45 After 1945, following the registration of the war damages and the natural-and partly forced—generation change, the schematised historical view forced onto Hungarian scholarship did not favour high-standard archaeological research or the publication of objective data. And since the international archaeological congress planned for the end of the 1940s was not held, there was a lack incentives which would have favourably influenced Hungarian Bronze Age studies. Owing to archaeological tradition it was the site of Tószeg that again came into foreground. The publication of the excavation conducted during the preliminaries to the congress—a first in interdisciplinary analyses in Hungarian archaeology-partly corrected previous results, and also established the later oft-quoted relative chronological framework. 46 Even though the excavators repeatedly emphasized that they tried to adjust their spade spits to stamped and beaten earth and clay levels -i.e. to living surfaces and house foundations — , 47 the published profile sections clearly reveal that they did not succeed in every case. Beside the large-scale excavation of various Late Bronze Age settlements such as Pécsvárad-Arany hegy, 48 Esztergom-Helemba sziget, 49 Neszmély-Téglagyár, 50 Bükkszentlászló-Nagysánc 51 and Felsőtárkány-Várhegy, 52 a few other multiplayer settlements were also investigated. A rescue excavation with extremely forced pace was conducted at Dunaújváros-Koszider, both on the settlements and the cemeteries. Unfortunately, the documentation of the settlement excavation has survived in part only and a part of the grave finds was damaged in the course of storage. Only the finds from one cemetery have been published until now. Even though the results are still unpublished, it is somewhat reassuring that in 1957 and 1966 complex investigations were again carried out on the site which is sadly continuously being destroyed. 53 Several systematic campaigns were conducted on the Békés-Várdomb site; a preliminary report was published already during the excavation work, which was followed by a comprehensive monograph. The work on this site can be regarded as the incentive to the complex settlement archaeology of recent decades. 54 The principles of coordinated and more intensive regional settlement archaeology were formulated in the 1960s. True enough, it was not a programme imposed
