Pop, Dan: The Middle Bronze Age Settlement of Petea-Csengersima (Satu Mare, 2009)
II. Cultural assigning of the Middle Bronze Age finds
been excavated, we could observe a greater concentration in the southern and eastern sides of the settlement. We also noticed that the long side of the houses were prominently oriented in the eastwest direction or close to this direction. Only in four cases (features 578, 830, 1155 and 1496) the long sides were oriented in the south-north direction or close to it2\ The distribution manner of the houses within the settlement indicates their grouping, as the case with features 780, 780 B, 780 C, 772 A, 578 and 544 D, 566, 569 and 597, but it is difficult to say in all cases whether the constructions are aligned by a particular system. The first group mentioned above seems to confirm the existence of such a system. II.2. Pits Most of the features that belonged to the Middle Bronze Age could be interpreted as pits (no.=62). It was impossible to say what was their prophile because only their inferior part was investigated. The depth from the sterile layer, where they had been identified, was 5 to 66 cm. There were several cases of pits with conical shapes (533), and bag shaped (549, 944, 1465). As regards their ground plan, there are 26 circular pits23 24 with the diameter between 70 and 210 cm. The oval pits were rather difficult to assign to the categories of houses as thy might have been either pithouses or annexes. Taking into account the size of the features, we considered that 23 of them were oval pits, with diameters between 65 x 80 cm and 185 x 220 cm25. Features 544 B and 1630 B also belong to the category of pits except that their shape could not be specified. Small pits (post holes ?) According to their size and content, some pits could be considered post holes. Two of them could be related to the houses in their vicinity; pit 565 was located south-west of the house 566, and pit 783 was situated west of hose 780. Moreover, there were four post holes which lacked inventory nearby house 935. However, we think that eleven of the pits of under 70 cm in dimensions and a deep between 16 and 32 cm can be included in this category. They were either circular (526, 531, 565, 936, 937, 938, 939 and 1307) or oval (559, 729 and 783) in plan. The fill of the pits was homogeneous and most frequently of grey-yellowish colour and rarely dark grey, ash-grey, black or reddish. The fill of the pits contained mostly ceramic fragments, few objects made of fired clay (fragmentary clay weighs, small wheels of miniature carts), stone grinder fragments, one stone mould, large or small pieces of daub, and small-sized pieces of charcoal. With very few exceptions, the ceramic inventory was scarce (1-20 sherds). There were situations when the fill of the pit revealed a considerable quantity of ceramics (between 100 and 350 sherds in features 537 B, 538 and 1014). It is worth mentioning the quite numerous presence of small fragments of daub or of large sized ones with rod prints within the pit inventory. The fill of the pits was similar to the one of the houses, both in terms of their inventory and colours. They differ in size, namely the houses are larger. They seemed to have functioned at first as storage pits, and then they were transformed into waste pits. Our point of view is that the pits were not used for clay extraction for pottery as they were not dug too deep into the sterile soil: for example, one of the circular pits deepened 65 cm into the sterile soil and an oval pit - 66 cm). The spatial arrangement of the pits in the settlement is quite homogeneous. A lighter representation can be observed in the south-eastern part of the site, namely there was only one pit (577) south of the house 578 and two pits (782 A and 782 B) east of the houses 780, 780 B and 23 544 D: north-east - south-west; 566 north-south; 569: can't be specified; 578: east - west; 597: eastnorth-east - west south-west; 780 B: north-south; 780 C: north-west - south-east; 1150: north-east - southwest; 1155: east-west; 1496: east-west; 772 A: north-south; 780: north-east - south- west; 830: west-northwest - east-south-east; 1104: west-north-west - east-south-east; 1105: east-north-east - west-south-west; 1284 B: west-north-west - east-south-east; 1302: we couldn't tell the orientation; 24 If we assigned feature 1109 to that category. We speak of the following features: 536 D, 537 A, 537 B, 544 A, 544 E, 544 F, 545, 569 B, 577, 657, 769, 782 A, 843, 1106, 1254, 1240, 1275, 1298, 1302 B, 1304, 1461, 1462, 1463, 1500 A, 1630, 1820. 25 There are the features: 533, 534, 536 A, 536 B=536 E, 536 C, 537 C, 538, 544 C, 549, 554 B, 554 C, 656 B, 782 B, 944, 1005 A, 1005 B, 1014, 1020, 1095, 1241, 1287 A, 1465, 1690. 12
