Communities and Monuments in the Making: Neolithic Tells on the Great Hungarian Plain (2022). In: First Kings of Europe: From Farmers to Rulers in Prehistoric Southeastern Europe, edited by Attila Gyucha and William A. Parkinson. UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Blanco-González, A.-Kienlin, Tobias L. (Eds): Current approaches to tells in the Prehistoric Old World. Oxbow., 2020
It has since long been known that in the Southern Hungarian Plain, north of the River Maros, tell-type settlements made their appearance at the turn of the 6th and 5th millennia BC, whereby this region, together with southern Transylvania, became part of the northern periphery of the world of Balkanic tells. These tells, tell-like settlements and single-layer settlements, which can be associated with the Tisza-Herpály-Csőszhalom complex, a cultural unit distinguished on the basis of ceramic ornamentation, dotted the Tisza region. In the wake of previous work in the region as described above, it became clear that the Late Neolithic site of Öcsöd-Kováshalom and the associated settlement landscape could be fitted into the general process characterized by settlement concentration and nucleation from the close of the Middle Neolithic (c. 5250 BC). Concurrently with this structural reorganization, we witness the appearance of tells and tell-like ‘monumental architectures’ on the Southern Hungarian Plain, representing novel forms of a community’s self-definition. It became clear that the tell-like settlement of ÖcsödKováshalom was not a solitary phenomenon (as assumed in the 1980s), but one in a chain of nucleated settlements together with other Tisza sites along the margins of the floodplains of the Tisza and the Körös Rivers.
Edited by Attila Gyucha and William A. Parkinson: First Kings of Europe: From Farmers to Rulers, 44-59., 2022
In the southern Balkans—in central and northern Greece, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, and the European part of Turkey—many tells were formed right at the beginning of the Neolithic, during the seventh millennium BC, as the first farmers moved into Europe. Farther north, in the central and northern Balkans and the Carpathian Basin, tell sites were only established several hundred years after the first agricultural populations had migrated into the region, at the turn of the sixth and fifth millennia BC (Figure 3.5).3 In this chapter, we discuss these later tells, which, in many cases, were the first large, permanent farming settlements in their regions. As a result, these centers would have triggered unprecedented social and political developments by providing ideal venues for ambitious groups and individuals to introduce new forms and mechanisms of control and power. We focus here on the Late Neolithic period of the Great Hungarian Plain and present three examples to demonstrate the different ways in which these sites were formed, and how their communities developed their own social and political organizations.
A B S T R A C T Nucleated tell sites emerged on the Great Hungarian Plain nearly a millennium after the earliest agricultural communities established sedentary settlements at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Once established, these unprecedentedly large population centers had a dramatic impact on their local environment. In this article, we present the results of our recent research at two Neolithic tells in the Körös Region of the Great Hungarian Plain. These sites – Vésztő-Mágor and Szeghalom-Kovácshalom – were established at roughly the same time and were located on the same branch of the Sebes-Körös River. Focusing on two methods – geophysics and micro-stratigraphy – we compare how these two nearby sites were established, evolved, and were abandoned within their local landscapes. Whereas geophysical surveys provide a horizontal picture of how the sites expanded over space, microstratigraphic studies provide a vertical perspective of the social processes that built the tells over time. Although both settlements were established at the same time, the sites developed in very different ways. We attribute these differences in the micro-regional trajectories to specific traditions associated with different local communities.
Fowler, C. - Harding, J. - Hofmann, D.: The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe, 2015
This contribution traces the development of tells, or settlement mounds, in south-east Europe. Owing to their surviving height, these habitation monuments became the foci of regional research traditions, but more recently the balance has shifted to include horizontal or 'flat' sites. This has allowed to integrate tells into their social context, to systematically investigate off-tell activity, the different notions of time and community played out in both types of settlement, and the relations to other kinds of site, such as cemeteries. This chapter offers a chronological overview from the earliest tells in the southern Balkans in the mid 7th millennium, when households engaged in a variety of mobility strategies, to their expansion north-westwards into the Hungarian Plain, during which the significance of tells also altered. While tells continue to be built until around 3700 BC, the increasing social stratification may be a factor in their ultimately rapid abandonment.