Alföld Linear Pottery Culture

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

As a result of the relations between the Starcevo-Körös Culture and
the
mesolithic indigenous populations in the Carpathian basin , the
northern and
western regions of Hungary passed a development from acculturation
and shifting
to a secundary neolithic state of subsistence, while still holding to
a mainly
mesolithic economly to proper agricultural communities, where the
influences
conveyed by the continual and direct access to the East Mediterranean
world was
toned down and the old customs and world vision still embraces and
enclosed in
the husbandry system.

The Central European agriculturalists attaine an independent and
uniform
character, on the basis of its typical pottery, the term linear
pottery Culture
is used to describe it; this Western Hungarian culture practiced a
clearing
system on which tenure settlements and cultivable lands were
discarded and
interchanged.

In Eastern Hungary, a special type of the LPC constitutes the Alföld
Linear
Pottery Culture, which spread enabled it to bring under its banner
the Körös
Culture , whereby the southern influence stronger was felt than in
its sister
culture, the Transdanubian LPC.

The ALPC spread eats of the Tisaza river up to the northern part of
the
triangle Tisza,Körös and Maros, while ist eastern boundaries fade
away in the
Great Hungarian Plain , curiously enough not just the fertile areas
were
branded for settlement, also caverniuos, mountainious and hill
countries got
favoured without probable reasons for development to be accounted
for..

This culture exhibits a hybrid or intermediate character between the
locally
fledged Transdanubian LPC of Pannonia and the Mediterranean way of
living, e.g.
the small huts, but the shape of the vessels was similar to the
transdanubian,
applying the gourd shape and the use of incised ornamental
techniques, which
was uncommon in the Southern Balkans, but the patterns in eastern
Hungary were
definetly restricted to this area.

The settlements contained only a few houses and they consist of small
square houses, laying over an area of 12 to 20 square metres.
Sometimes wood constructions were erected in caves as well, perhaps
the timberstructures served as protection to the inner humidity of
the air in the caves.

These settlements were also involved in certain occupation like the
mining of obsidian or flint stone, later transported to distant parts
as ready-made blades or unfinished nuclei.

The graves of the ALPC were among the houses without any sign of
system, but furnished with one or two vessels.
these graves were also dug in caves, burnt and splintered human bones
were scrambled with food rests: cannibalism, inherited from the
people of the Körös Culture, where ritial cannibalism might
have been
practiced.
The cave cults are noted here for the small clay shrine in
hemispherical pits covered with ashes and finely polished pierced
breast discs made of sea shells; one grops still in the dark about
the exact meaning of these offerings.

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

The transdanubian linear pottery culture is one of the many regional
manifestations of the vastly to central and western europe extending
faction of the LPC, in Hungary it counts the transdanubian region,
trailing along the danubian bend and with outpost in the hillsides of
Gödöllo and Nograd.
The settlements are undistinguished from what's commonly found in
Moravia and Germany with many-storeyed and beam-supporting
large-family houses, surrounded by large arable areas, but smaller
huts with walls sunk into the ground are sporadically present.
Art avoids here figurative representation and played a subordinate
role in the everydays'exigencies.
Since in general lines the transdanubians are vitually unseperatable
from the socio-cultural subsistence of the western LPC, an outline of
this culture will furtheron be provided.



Anyway, both factions deliver the same simple spherical shaped
vessels, imitating natural forms, especially the gourd, whereby
patterns of rhythmically roling arcs, loose spirals and zigzag lines
recur on the walls; because the vessels were smooth and easy damaged,
they were carried in net bags, which incidentlt provided them with
another plastic ornamental motif, that of the net and knots.

But the eastern hungarian type adresses itself to the earlier Körös
Culture with human figures in relief with arms turned up or downwards
from the elbows and the custom of anthropomorphic pots, not unlike
those found in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Rumania as well the
large-sized face-pots, invoking a goddess to protect the storaged corn
from theft, deterrence and other noxious effects.
Also the symbolism is related to the east mediterranean neolithic
cultures with M-shaped incised signs.
Reminiscent of strange triangular face idols in Greece is a find in
Tolcsva: a deltoid shaped flat figure with rigid deportment, stretched
out by eeriely elongated chin, hafted to the vessel with portruding
nose and slits indicating eyes and mouth; on the back of the head,
hair strains are expressed by incisions.

[Xiongnu]

I just realized the other day that I live in a hotbed of Central European archeological activity (Körös Culture). Perhaps I will be able to go to the local library and see if there are any Hungarian anthropology books available. If and when I do, I will let you know.