Cristian, Virag (szerk.): Neolithic cultural phenomena in the Upper Tisa Basin (Satu Mare, 2015)

Piroska Csengeri: Middle Neolithic Painted Pottery from Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County, North-Eastern Hungary

Middle Neolithic Painted Pottery from Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County,

North-Eastern Hungary

Piroska CSENGERI

Keywords: Neolithic, North-eastern Hungary, Alföld Linear Pottery culture, regional pottery styles, painted ceramics

Abstract: Middle Neolithic painted pottery from the territory of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County of North-eastern Hungary is presented here. The first Neolithic culture of this County was the Alföld Linear Pottery (ALP) culture (or in Slovakian terminology: Eastern Linear Pottery culture). Painted ceramics were made in the 1st phase of the culture and they were used in different scale and manner within ALP 2 pottery style and by the late regional groups/pottery styles of the “incised block” of ALP (Tiszadob, Bükk, Szakálhát). Beside this “own painted pottery” also occurred sherds and vessels which have been referred to contacts with the “painted block” of the Middle Neolithic (Esztár group/style of Eastern Hungary and adjacent parts of Romania and non-Esztár group/ style of North-eastern Hungary, Eastern Slovakia, South-western Ukraine and North-western Romania) at these settlements. All of the mentioned painted ceramics of different sites of Borsod- Abaúj-Zemplén County have been introduced and analysed here in a supposed chronological order.

Introduction

Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County is an administrative district of North-eastern Hungary. Its territory extends to 7.248 km2 and is characterized by a varied geography. North Hungarian Mid-mountains (“Északi-középhegység”: highlands, hilly lands, river valleys) constitutes 60% of its territory and the Great Hungarian Plain (“Alföld”: floodplains, alluvial plains) have been located to 40% of it.1 The County has 36 micro-regions2, so mosaic-like character of the geology and geography of Hungary has considerably been represented here.

One of its micro-regions, the Hungarian part of the Bodrog-Tisza Interfluve (“Bodrogköz”) is part of the Upper Tisza Region.3 The river Tisza courses at the south-eastern edge of this area nowadays. But, on the basis of the research of Z. Borsy, E. Félegyházi and É. Csongor and later J. Lóki and E. Félegyházi the image of the Upper Tisza Region was different in the Boreal and Atlantic phases,4 so in the Neolithic, too. Tisza flowed more westerly than now (in the mid of the modern Bodrogköz)5, so this micro-region of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County even more belonged to the Upper Tisza Region in the Neolithic than nowadays.

Middle Neolithic sites of Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County were collected by the author in the frame of a PhD work in the last years. Dissertation has been concerned with the late groups of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture in the County (from this point ALP culture in the text) and the analysis of its archaeological sites and find materials in a broader scale.6 Heritage of Tiszadob, Bükk and Szakálhát regional groups or pottery styles of the 3rd and 4th phases of

1 F. Nagy/Molnár 2003, 7.

2 On the basis of categories of Marosi/Somogyi 1990 and Dövényi 2010 for micro-regions.

3 Marosi/Somogyi 1990, 161-165; Dövényi 2010, 144-148.

4 Borsy et al. 1989, 71-72 and Fig. 5-6; Lóki/Félegyházi 2008.

5 Borsy et al. 1989, 71 and Fig. 5-6; Lóki/Félegyházi 2008.

6 Csengeri 2013.