Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
WHATTHE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDINGS TELL US 33 settlements, the forming of villages; the production of fired clay pottery for storing and making food; the invention of weaving and spinning. Cultivation of the land necessitated more efficient tools like bored stone axes or wedges. Having turned to agriculture people were not so much at the mercy of nature; as a result of safer living conditions the population was increasing, which lead to a decrease in the maintaining capacity of certain areas. Larger and smaller groups migrating from the Middle East to the north or north-west through South Eastern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula brought the new knowledge and disseminated it around the Carpathian Basin. In Hungary the Early Neolithic Age began around 6000 BC when the early neolithic cultures in Transdanubia and in the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain passed on the new technology to the people living on fishing, hunting and gathering north of them. As a result, in the Mid-Neolithic Age two new related cultures were born: the culture of the Trcmsdanubian linear pattern pottery in the western part of the country, and that of the linear pattern pottery of the Great Hungarian Plain in the East. The most characteristic feature of Vác's geographical location is that it lies at the intersection of three large regions: Transdanubia, the Northern Medium Mountains, and the Great Hungarian Plain. This was one of the reasons why in different prehistoric periods the peoples who settled here were from either the western, the eastern or the southern part of the country. There were even times when the frontier between neighbouring peoples ran across the Vác area, which was also due to its unique geographical position. The people of the Transdanubian linear pattern pottery lived here in the Mid-Neolithic Age Polished stone axe (PMMI-TIM 64.1.1) (5400/5300-5000/4900 BC). As their name indicates, they decorated their fired clay pots with incised curved lines, later with note-shaped patterns. It is also by the range of patterns that we can distinguish their late, so-called Zseliz Period: the incised lines running around the pots are interrupted by short, plum stone shaped cuts. The culture formed its settlements near natural water sources, mainly on hillsides covered with loess. According to the evidence of some Transdanubian excavations, they lived in extended family houses. They were Antler hoe (PMMI-TIM 60.5.3) called long-houses and were built on the ground. They brought land into cultivation by clearing and burning; they used axes ground from stone with handle-piercing as well as antler hoes for breaking the soil; they harvested the crops with sickles, which were stone blades mounted in antler. Because of the reasons mentioned above remnants of the linear pattern pottery are very scarce in central Vác. They include a note-patterned pot fragment and a reticulated pot-bottom. We have a larger number of finds from the neolithic settlement excavated on the Danube bank on the northern edge of the town. Latticed pot-bottom (PMMI-TIM 82.25.1) I PREHISTORIC AGE 500,000 BC - around the birth of Christ Copper Age 4500/4400-2800/2700 BC Bronze Age 2700-900/800 BC Early Iron Age 900/800-450 BC Late Iron Age - Celtic civilization 450 BC - around the birth of Christ Animal husbandry, tools of agriculture, cart, cremation graves Fortified settlement, bellshaped vessels, Tumulus culture, bronze fibula (safety pin) Scythian culture, meander-patterned seal Highly developed agriculture, handicraft and trade, hilltop settlement
