Méhtelek

British Archaeological Series Int. Ser.

Budapest, Archaeolingua, 2011
Puhakötés | Paper book
129 oldal, színes és fekete-fehér illusztrációkkal | 129 pages with colored and grayscale images

ISBN 978 1 4073 0904 0

Description

Méhtelek lies in the easternmost corner of County Szabolcs-Szatmár (eastern Hungary). The importance of this archaeological site is manifold. The finds from the 1973 excavation and the fresh archaeological information provided by the site confirmed earlier speculations that the broader region had been part of the Early Neolithic world of the 6th millennium BC. The finds enabled the separation of the Méhtelek group, a variant of the Körös culture of the Alföld (Hungarian Plain), as well as the precise cultural and chronological attribution of several assemblages of stray finds collected earlier to the Méhtelek group of the Alföld Körös culture. Assemblages related to or identical with the finds from Méhtelek came to light in the north-easterly region of the Alföld and in the neighbouring regions of Romania and the Ukraine. The Méhtelek group represents the first Neolithic farming population in the north-eastern part of the Carpathian Basin. The finds from the site indicated that the Méhtelek community had played an important role in the acquisition, processing and trade of obsidian, a volcanic rock used for the manufacture of various implements. The site yielded an astonishingly high number of clay figurines, suggesting that it had also been a ritual centre.