Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

HALL 5 - The Iron Age: The Scythians and the Hallstatt culture (800-450 B.C.) (Tibor Kemenczei)

HALL 5 The Iron Age: The Scythians and the Hallstatt culture (800-450 B.C.) A series of fundamental changes can be noted in the culture and the craft industry of the communities living in the Danube-Tisza region in the 8th century B.C., one of which was the decline of the bronze industry and the spread of iron metallurgy, ushering in the Iron Age. Experimentation with iron metallurgy began at roughly the same time in various regions of Eurasia during the early 1st millennium B.C.: in the Caucasus, in the eastern half of the Carpathian Basin and in the Balkans. The spread of iron metallurgy signalled a new phase in metalworking and sparked changes in the economy and social patterns. From the Early Iron Age until the arrival of the Celts, the Great Hungarian Plain and its northern fringes were part of the pre-Scythian and Scythian world extending to the northern Pontic. The areas west of the Danube were part of the Central European culture province: first of the Hallstatt culture and, from the last decades of the 5th century B.C., of the Celtic realm. THE PRE-SCYTHIAN PERIOD IN THE GREAT HUNGARIAN PLAIN (8th century-earlier 7th century B.C.) Around the turn of the 9th-8th centuries B.C., at the dawn of the Iron Age, the life of the communities living in the Great Hungarian Plain was considerably transformed. This transformation can in part be traced to the environment, which resembled the forested steppe and the steppeland extending east of the Carpathians, in the Prut-Dniester-Middle Dnieper region. Until the river regulations in the 19th century, about one-fourth of the Great Hungarian Plain was covered with water, floodplains, marshland and bogs. The extensive floodplains provided a favourable environment for extensive pastoralism. Although the climate became cooler and dryer at the beginning of the 1st millennium B.C., this did not transform the landscape, enabling a shift to economies based on stockbreeding among the population groups of the Great Hungarian Plain. The archaeological record indicates the arrival and settlement of pastoralist communities in the Tisza region during the 8th century B.C. The cemetery uncovered at Mezőcsát reflects the spread of a new burial rite: the earlier cremation burials were replaced by inhumation graves with the deceased laid to rest in a contracted or extended position. The grave goods too indicate the appearance of an entirely new range of artefact types. Chunks of sheep and cattle meat were often placed into the grave, together with articles of horse harness. This burial custom was widespread among stockbreeding peoples. The finds from burials and hoards in the Tisza region and their resemblance to the preScythian assemblages of the steppe suggests that a mounted nomadic population of eastern stock settled in the Great Hungarian Plain during the Early Iron Age. According to Herodotus, the Greek historian, the steppe north of the Pontic was ruled by the Cimmerians before the rise of the Scythians. Since, however, the Cimmerians were but one of the many groups populating the steppe, the identification of this eastern population with one particular steppean people is practically impossible. The Early Iron Age population of the Middle Tisza region exerted a much greater cultural influence on the crafts of neighbouring and more distant communities than their actual number and the extent of their settlement territory would warrant. The reason for this was that they were in command of skills such as iron metallurgy and had developed new types of weaponry and horse harness, which were the most advanced at the time. These new innovations were diffused along the Danubian trade routes not only to Transdanubia (Pécs-Jakabhegy), but also to other regions of Central Europe. The bronze cheekpieces and strap distributors from the Northern and Central Balkans and from Northern Italy are indications of the southern contacts of the population in the Great Hungarian Plain.