KOVÁCS TIBOR: TUMULUS CULTURE CEMETERIES OF TISZAFÜRED / Régészeti Füzetek II/17. (Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Budapest, 1975)

I. Studyof the Bronze Age Relics of Tiszafüred

I. STUDY OF THE BRONZE AGE RELICS OF TISZAFÜRED The name of Tiszafüred became famous in 1876, the year of the millenium celebrations and the prehistoric conference (Fig. 1). This year marked wide archaeological activities. In spite of the fact, that the Archaeological Society of Tiszafüred, founded in 1878, was one of the first organized societies to collect archaeological material, the local museum unfortunately stayed on the level of village collections.

1 Most of the archaeological material came from a place close to the Northeastern boundary of the town, called Ásotthalom, a prehistoric tell settlement, excavated by Ede Tariczky, later by Béla Milesz. Thus it is just natural, that after the first publication of these finds, the name of Ásotthalom and Tiszafüred became synonimous from a prehistoric archaeological point of view. Béla Milesz reports only details of his observations of his early extensive excavations in the local annual and in the Archaeological Journal, (Archeológiai Értesítő).

2 His notes are lost, so the source material value of the finds of the 4 m thick tell, now in the National Museum,

3 and the local museum

4 is almost negligible.

5 In some respect this applies to the gold find (Füzesabony Culture), found 1,5 deep in the settlement, the bone and horn carvings (Füzesabony and Hatvan Cultures)

6 and the mould find (Koszider Period)

7 in spite of the fact, that in the light of detailed questions, research returns to these, time and time again.

0 During the sixties great progress was made in learning to know the prehistoric people of Tiszafüred. In the course of flood-control work the 2-3 m high Ásotthalom was leveled to the present surface in 1964 (Fig. 2).

9 Only an about 80 x 4 m section remained on the Eastern part of the settlement, perpendicular to the Tisza river bed, oriented N-S, but even the top, 1—1,2 m layer was missing also. During the authenticating excavations the surface e. g. the profiles were cut, this made it clear, that the stratigraphy was broken by two burnt layers. The same data was reported by Béla Milesz also. We only found an 8 x 3 m undisturbed surface between the layers of the previous excavations of the the beginning of the century. Here, the close to 3 m deep stratigraphy contained five major settlement periods: I—III. — Füzesabony Culture, IV. — Hatvan Culture, V. - Baden (Pécel) Culture, VI. - Linear decorated pottery culture of the Hungarian Plains. With the removal of the top 1—1,5 m the possibly Late Bronze Age layer, e. g. the Koszider Period settlement could have been destroyed.

1

0 The systematic research of the cemeteries, belonging to the tell began within the framework of the second water terrace construction of the Tisza river, which brought along archaeological excavations also.

1

1 This looked back upon two certain data, a) János Szabó excavated Bronze Age graves on the mild slope of the northerly, 8—10 m high hill, South of Ásotthalom in 1960; and Zsolt Csalog did the same, not far from here, in a place called Majoroshalom in 1961 and 1964.

1

2 b) When in 1964 some earthwork was going on a top a sandy hill, called Kenderföldek (Fig. 2) a kilometer away, north of Ásotthalom, Zsolt Csalog rescued graves of the Tumulus Culture, e. g. the Füzesabony Culture.

1

3 The long range excavation of the mainly undisturbed Majoroshalom cemetery section began with this background in 1965. The center of the burial site was the sandy hill stretching NE-SW. This area was about 2-3 m higher than the surrounding, occasionally water covered plain. During the 1965—1972 excavations about 18,000 square Fig. 1. 5