EARLY NEO LITHIC IN THE UP PER TISZA BA SIN: NEW DATA … · lithic of the upper Tisza ba sin. The first trial ex ca - va tions were un der taken in the same year. The re sults turned

Eur asian Pre his tory, 7 (1): 153–213.

EARLY NEO LITHIC IN THE UP PER TISZA BA SIN:NEW DATA FROM MORAVANY, EAST ERN SLOVAKIA

Marek Nowak1, Janusz Krzysztof Koz³owski1, Ma³gorzata Kaczanowska2, Marían Vizdal3,Tomasz Kalicki4, Magdalena Moskal-del Hoyo5, Anna Budek6, Georgiy Litvinyuk7,

Maria Lityñska-Zaj¹c8, Ewa Stobierska9 and Piotr Wyszomirski9

1 In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy, Jagiellonian Uni ver sity; ul. Go³êbia 11, 31-007 Kraków, Po land; [email protected];[email protected]

2 Os. Kolorowe 7/23-24, 31-938 Kraków, Po land; [email protected] Philo soph i cal Fac ulty, Prešov Uni ver sity; ul. 17. novembra 1, 08001 Prešov, Slovakia; [email protected]

4 In sti tute of Ge og ra phy, The Jan Kochanowski Uni ver sity of Hu man i ties and Sci ences; ul. Œwiêtokrzyska 15,25-406 Kielce, Po land; [email protected]

5 Departamento de Prehistària i Arqueologia, Universitat de ValÀncia, Av. Blasco Ibáòez 28, 46010 Spain;[email protected]

6 In sti tute of Ge og ra phy and Spa tial Or gani sa tion, Pol ish Acad emy of Sci ences; ul. œw. Jana 22, 31-018 Kraków, Po land; [email protected]

7 Chair of Phys i cal Ge og ra phy, En vi ron men tal Sci ences Fac ulty, Belarussian State Ped a gog i cal Uni ver sity;Sovietska 18, corp. 3, 220050 Minsk, Belarus

8 In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy and Eth nol ogy, Pol ish Acad emy of Sci ence, Kraków branch; ul. S³awkowska 17,31-016 Kraków, Po land; [email protected]

9 Fac ulty of Ma te ri als Sci ence and Ce ram ics, AGH Uni ver sity of Sci ence and Tech nol ogy; al. Mickiewicza 30,30-059 Kraków, Po land; [email protected]; [email protected]

Ab stractHere we sum ma rize the re sults of the re search pro ject fo cused on palaeo geo graphi cal and ar chae o log i cal char ac ter is -

tics of early Neo lithic set tle ment at Moravany (east ern Slovakia). The ma te rial cul ture and ra dio car bon dat ing in di cate that the in hab it ants of this set tle ment be longed to the first wave of Neo lithic farm ers in the East ern Slovakian Low land. Theset tle ment lasted for at least 100–200 years, within the pe riod of 5,500–5,200/5,100 cal. BC. Al though it was a rel a tivelysta ble vil lage, no traces of hu man ac tiv i ties have been found in the sed i ments of the sur round ing ar eas, sim i larly to otherearly Neo lithic set tle ments in the Carpathian Ba sin. The most plau si ble cul tural hy poth e sis is that the set tle ment at Mora-vany was founded by a pop u la tion who ap par ently de scended from the tra di tion of the Körös-Cris cul ture.

Key words: pot tery, lithics, geoarchaeology, palaeo ge ogra phy, archaeobotany

IN TRO DUC TION

The ear li est Neo lithic in the up per Tisza ba sin is doc u mented by an ar chae o log i cal phe nom e noncalled ei ther the East ern Lin ear Pot tery cul ture orthe Alföld Lin ear Pot tery cul ture (Alföldi Vonal-diszes Kerámia – AVK) (Kalicz and Makkay,1977; Šiška, 1989; Koz³owski (ed.), 1997) whichis slightly sim i lar to the West ern Lin ear Pot teryCul ture (Linearbandkeramik – LBK). Its be gin -

ning is dated to 5,600/5,500 cal. BC. The ba siccul tural pat terns of the AVK so ci et ies had theirroots in the first Neo lithic cul tures of the south-east ern Eu rope, de fined as the First Tem per ateNeo lithic (FTN), that lasted from ca. 6,300 to5,300 cal BC. The north-east ern branch of theFTN, the Körös-Cris cul ture, was the most im por -tant in trans mit ting the Neo lithic socio-eco nomicpat terns to the north and north east.

The dis cov ery of a new AVK set tle ment atMoravany in 1998 pro vided the op por tu nity to in -crease our knowl edge con cern ing the early Neo -lithic of the up per Tisza ba sin. The first trial ex ca -va tions were un der taken in the same year. There sults turned out to be very prom is ing and there -fore we ini ti ated an in ter dis ci plin ary re search pro -ject. Since 2000 the joint in ves ti ga tions were con -ducted within the frame work of the tri par titeagreement be tween the In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy,Jagiellonian Uni ver sity in Kraków, the In sti tuteof Ar chae ol ogy, Slovakian Acad emy of Sci encesand the Philo soph i cal Fac ulty of Prešov Uni ver -sity. To gether with field cam paigns, a num ber of

ar chae o log i cal, palaeoenvironmental and palaeo-eco nomic anal y ses were ex e cuted (Kaczanowskaet al., 2002, 2003; Kalicki et al., 2004; 2005;Koz³owski et al., 2003; Nowak et al., 2006).

LO CA TION AND PRES ENT-DAYEN VI RON MEN TAL SET TING

The site (N 48°44’15’’, E 21°48’06’’) is lo -cated in the East ern-Slovakian Low land (Fig. 1)on the west ern slope of the tec tonic horst knownas the Pozdišovský Range tes ti fy ing to a smallscale up lift (Figs 2, 3). This range of N–S di rec -tion is an el e va tion be tween two de pres sions: theOndava Plain on the west and the Laborec Plainon the east. The Sarmatian (Kochanovce for ma -tion) and the Lower Pannonian (Seèovce for ma -tion) clays built this el e va tion. The Qua ter narycover of slope de pos its is ir reg u lar and very thin.This is no sur prise whereas ra dio car bon datingsfrom the al lu vial and bur ied soil in di cate that in -ten sive slope move ments oc curred in the studyarea dur ing the max i mum of last gla ci ation(Kalicki et al., 2004). The de pos its are very ho -mo ge neous silts (Mz = 6.3–6.7ö), badly sorted (ä= 1.6–1.7) (Fig. 4). Only the south ern part of thePozdišovský Range, 5 km south ward from thesite, is cov ered with loess. The Qua ter nary al lu via of the Ondava, Top¾a and Laborec rivers fill thedepresions (Baòacký et al., 1987).

The site is sit u ated at the al ti tude of 163 ma.s.l., about 60 m above the Ondava flood plain,and is lim ited in the south by a small, dry val ley of the Šarkan creek (Fig. 2). This is a periglacial val -ley in cised in the lo cal bed rock (Kvitkoviè, 1980). In ter est ingly, the ex ca vated set tle ment has an aty- pical top o graph i cal po si tion since early Neo lithicsites tend to con cen trate in the lower part of thelo cal re lief (Gillings, 1997; Kosse, 1979; Shiel,1997; Sümegi, 2004).

The cli mate of this re gion is warm (meantem per a ture of July 8–9 °C; 50 or more days withdaily max i mum air tem per a ture above 25 °C an -nu ally on av er age), mod er ately dry (mean an nualpre cip i ta tion about 600 mm) with cool win ters(mean tem per a ture of Jan u ary be low 3 °C) (Lapin et al., 2002). The Ondava and Top¾a rivers have arain-snow com bined type of run-off re gime withflood dur ing March and min i mum dis charges dur -ing Sep tem ber (Šimo and Zaïko, 2002).

154 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 1. Lo ca tion of Moravany

Early Neo lithic in the Up per Tisza Ba sin 155

Fig. 2. Lo ca tion of the early Neo lithic site at Moravany (black rect an gle) and trial trenches (small black rect an -gles)

Fig. 3. View of the early Neo lithic site at Moravany. Red line en cir cles an ap prox i mate ex tent of the site. Slanské Vrchy – Slanské Moun tains, Ondavská rovina – Ondava plain, Pozdišovský chrbát – Pozdišovský Range

Eutric to dystric planosols and (luvic-, albic-)stagnosols from col lu vial de pos its with very lowcon tent of hu mus in top soil oc cur on the Pozdi-šovský Range, whereas rich in hu mus (above

2.3%) eutric fluvisols as so ci ated with gleyic andarenic eutric fluvisols from non-car bon ate flu vialsed i ments dom i nate on the sur round ing plains(Bielek, 2002; Šály and Šurina, 2002).

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Fig. 4. North sec tion of trench D (A) and grain size com po si tion with Falk-Ward pa ram e ter dis tri bu tion of sed i -ments. A. 1 – brown silts, 2 – dark or ange silts, 3 – or ange silts, 4 – yelow-or ange silts with or ange points, 5 –yelow-or ange silts, 6 – charcoals. B. Sed i ments: A – silts; Frac tions: 1 – fine sand (2 to 4j), 2 – coarse and me diumsilt (4 to 6j), 3 – fine silt (6 to 8j), 4 – clay (above 8j); Folk-Ward dis tri bu tion pa ram e ters: Mz – mean size di am e -ter, dI – stan dard de vi a tion, SkI – skew ness, KG – kurtosis

Past-re con structed veg e ta tion should have inthe high est ar eas of the Pozdišovský Range oakfor est cover with Potentilla alba, and in the low -est slopes – low land hygrophilous oak and horn -beam for ests. Elm floodplain for ests and wil low-pop lar floodplain for ests prob a bly ex isted alongthe rivers of Ondava and Top¾a (Maglocký,2002).

PALAEO GEO GRAPHI CAL STUD IESAROUND THE SITE

Palaeo geo graphi cal stud ies were car ried outin the ar chae o log i cal site as well as in the neigh -bour ing ter ri tory (Kalicki et al., 2005, 2010). Data ob tained in bor ings and out crops sit u ated acrossthe Šarkan val ley, in its al lu vial fan and in theOndava flood plain are of the ut most im por tancein ref er ence to the re con struc tion of the geomor-phological his tory of the area.

The dis cov ery of black clays in the top lay ersof Ter tiary sed i ments in the Šarkan val ley (Fig. 5)in di cates that bur ied soils were partly pre servedon the slopes along the mar gins of the val ley.They were dated at 19,890±120 BP (Poz-6322).The bot tom of the val ley is filled with silts withnu mer ous char coal specks and plant macrorem-nants. Sev eral lay ers with a sandy-gravel ad mix -ture could be dis tin guished in this 3 metres thicksilty mem ber. These de pos its, at dif fer ent lev els,re flected the chan nel changes dur ing the in fill ingof the val ley.

The anal y sis of flo ral macroremnants in theflu vial sed i ments of the Šarkan creek (Kalicki etal., 2010) points to a rather ho mo ge neous and un -char ac ter is tic veg e ta tion. It con sisted mainly ofher ba ceous plants of wide spread oc cur rence. Thepre dom i nant ones were Scirpus, Urtica, Rumex,Polygonum, Chenopodium, Sambucus, Scleran-thus and oth ers that tes tify to a rel a tively cold cli -


Fig. 5. Sec tion across the Šarkan val ley near the early Neo lithic site at Moravany. 1 – Ter tiary clays, 2 – slopede pos its (deluvia), 3 – grav els, 4 – sandy grav els with silts, 5 – silty grav els, 6 – sandy silts, 7 – silts, 8 – or ganicsilts, 9 – bur ied soils, 10 – de tri tus, 11 – ra dio car bon datings

mate in the pe riod of sed i ment ac cu mu la tion.There is no sig nif i cant va ri ety of spe cies in thepro file. The num ber of macroremnants is sig nif i -cantly cor re lated with the suite of the de pos its. Inthe floor layer of the al lu vium that fills the val ley(depth 3.08–2.84 m) as well as in the lay ers ofcoarse-grained sed i ments (depth 2.15–1.14 m) the amount of flo ral de tri tus is con sid er ably re ducedand the num ber of rep re sented spe cies is twice aslower as in the ear lier de pos its. This phe nom e nonis best ob served at the depth of 1.68–1.75 mwhere only three spe cies were dis cov ered rep re -sented by only a few spec i mens. More over, thesesed i ments con tain the high est num ber of sharp-edged quartz grains (SiO2), which are par tic u larlynu mer ous in the floor layer at the depth of 3.08–2.92 m. In ad di tion, also lon ger (a few milli metres long), prism-like frag ments are pres ent. The fos sil flora is the most var ied at the depth of 3.16–3.08,2.84–2.15, and 0.75–0.0 m. These lev els con tain,inter alia, Juniperus communis (seeds), frag ments of the Pinaceae, Swida sanquinea, as well as Ra-nunculus linqua, R. repens, Chelidonium majus,Hypericum perforatum. In sum, the phases ofrapid ac cu mu la tion of coarse river-bed sed i mentswere in ter spersed with phases of sta bil ity andsteady sed i men ta tion of fine-grained sed i mentsthat in cluded a large amount of flo ral de tri tus re -flect ing high num ber of spe cies.

Ra dio car bon dat ing and archaeobotanicalanal y ses helped us to es tab lish the af ter math ofevents caused by cli ma tic fluc tu a tions and hu manim pact. Thanks to four AMS dates (Poz-10271:146.4±–0.3 pMC; Poz-10272: 250±35 BP;Poz-10273: 145±35 BP; Poz-10274: 154.2± –0.3pMC – Fig. 5), we know that the al lu via of theval ley are much youn ger than the Neo lithic. Inother words, there are no traces of the ac tiv ity ofNeo lithic peo ple un less these traces were de -stroyed in the youn ger pe ri ods. Šarkan’s al lu vialfan, cov er ing the mar gin of the Ondava floodplain, is also more re cent as in di cated by the dateof 365±30 BP (Poz-6323) of the low est sed i ments on the Ter tiary bed rock.

In sum, we dis tin guish five main stages of the de vel op ment of the val ley dur ing which the pe -ren nial creek turned into an ep i sodic creek:

1) In the Last Pleniglacial it was a periglacialval ley deeply in cised in the Ter tiary bed rock.

2) Dur ing most of the Ho lo cene it was a deep

val ley with a pe ren nial creek (this con clu sion re -solves the prob lem of wa ter sup ply for the Neo -lithic set tle ment).

3) The fill ing pro cesses be gan dur ing the Lit -tle Ice Age. Orig i nally, de pos its were trans portedto the al lu vial fan, as sug gested by the date point -ing to the fif teenth-sev en teenth cen tury AD.

4) The ac cu mu la tion of al lu vial fill ing of theval ley it self (ca. 1 m thick), which at times was atan ex tremely high rate, started af ter the Maun dermin i mum (1675–1715 AD).

5) Two pres ent-day dates, the low num ber ofplant taxa as well as the small amount of de tri tusat the depth of 2.15–1.14 m in di cate ex tremelystrong slope ero sion caused by hu man ac tiv ity inthe last de cades and fur ther flash flood in fill ing of the val ley. Most prob a bly this was caused by thecol lec tiv iza tion fol low ing the Sec ond World War, when pre vi ously di vided fields were joined andthe balks be tween them dis ap peared. The fi nalstage of the de vel op ment is a dry val ley with abraided al lu vial plain and ephem eral creek.

The re cent Ondava river course is very young and was es tab lished as a con se quence of the reg u -la tion and channelization of the river bed in thenine teenth and twen ti eth cen tury. Be fore the nine -teenth cen tury the course of the Ondava was ex -tremely un sta ble. In fact, there was no sin glecourse, and the Ondava was an anastomosingriver, di vided into at least sev eral me an der ingbranches, as can be seen in his tor i cal re cords (Ko- z³owski and Nowak, 2007). Be sides, al most ev ery spring the whole plain was flooded to a sig nif i -cant de gree. This is also ev i dent based on his tor i -cal data; for ex am ple on Moravany’s eigh teenth-cen tury coat-of-arms (see Fig. 3). The same phe -nom ena took place in pre his toric pe ri ods. Sec -tions and bor ings across the flood plain, botholder ones and those made dur ing our re search,show me an der ing belts, lo cated much closer tothe east ern slope of the val ley. Be sides, the pro -files with bur ied soils, black oaks, an i mal bonesand pre his toric pot tery oc cur in the val ley bot tomnear the study area.

In the lit er a ture the mid dle fos sil soils weredated in the Top¾a val ley to 4,720±300 BP(Božèice – 4 km to NE) and in the Ondava val leyat 4,200±900 BP (Kladzany – 15 km to N)whereas the lower and up per ones were com bined with the Preboreal and the Subboreal, re spec -

158 M. Nowak et al.

tively (Baòacký et al., 1987). Doubts in the chro -nol ogy are raised given the new re search re portedhere.

Stud ies of the mid dle Ondava river were done near Kladzany (N 48°52’56’’, E 21°44’23’’) in2006–2008. The area is lo cated about 16,5 kmnorth of Moravany (Kalicki et al., 2005). Theriver flows along a bot tom of a de pres sion char ac -ter is tic of a graben, lim ited from west and east byQua ter nary faults (Baòacký et al., 1987). The bor -ders of the val ley are cre ated by slopes de clin ingfrom troughs built of Baden rocks in the west(Vranovska Pahorkatina), and of Kladzany lay ers in the east (Karpatian). The Ter tiary rocks wereaf fected by a net work of pre-Qua ter nary faultsori ented SW–NE and SE–NW. The thick ness ofthe Qua ter nary sed i ments in the val ley bot tomdoes not ex ceed a dozen or so me ters (10.7 m inthe drill ing HO-27). These sed i ments con sti tuteof two se ries: the Vistulian grav els with sands arecov ered with sev eral me ters of the Ho lo ceneloams (see sec tion No. 2 in Baòacký et al., 1987).

In the bot tom of the about 2 km wide Ondavariver val ley, there are two mor pho log i cal ter raceseach ca. 1.5 m high. The higher ter race is raisedabout 8 m above the river and oc cu pies the larg est part of the val ley bot tom. This mor pho log i callevel con sists of at least two al lu vial bod ies, andthe mor pho log i cal dif fer ence, which per hapsorig i nally ex isted be tween them, be came lev eledby overbank sed i ments which oc cur in the upperpart of alluvia.

The older and higher ter race, that cov ers most of the west ern part of the val ley bot tom, is built of silts in the up per part of the pro file and of theVistulian grav elly-sandy al lu via in the lower part.Pro file ‘Kladzany 2006’ char ac ter izes geo log i calstruc ture of this frag ment of the val ley bot tom(the out crop on the right bank of the river, 100 mnorth of the bridge at the way to the vil lageMajerovce). At the foot of this pro file silty sandsof the thick ness 60 cm ap pear (Mz = 5.9j, d =2.0) while in the higher part silts of 2 m thick arevis i ble (Mz = 5.9j, d=2.0). Older sed i ments arecov ered with overbank al lu via – hor i zon tally bed -ded silts (Mz = 5.5j, d = 1.7) some 1.9 m thick.

The youn ger por tion of the higher ter racecov ers the east ern part the val ley bot tom. It isbuilt of di verse facii of al lu via of some 6–8 mthick above the level of the river. The main out -

crop in Kladzany, sev eral hun dred metres inlength, sit u ated on the left bank of the river, iscon nected with this ter race. It is most likely thesame as a pro file de scribed in Kladzany byBaòacký et al. (1987), wherein three bur ied soilswere dis tin guished: lower – Preboreal, mid dle –ra dio car bon dated at 4,200±900 BP, and up per –Subboreal. As noted above, cur rent re search didnot confirmed these results.

In the pro file ‘Kladzany 2007A’ (Fig. 6) theover all thick ness ex ceeds 6 m. In the lower part(depth 4.35–6.1 m) chan nel sed i ments ap pear –grav els of the di am e ter 4–6 cm with sands. Intheir bot tom part (5.2–5.4 m) ir reg u lar frag ments(porvak) of or ganic silts and clay balls were re -corded. The or ganic silts from such clay ball weredated at 9940±50 BP (Poz-22257). In the sandylayer (4.7–4.95 m) nu mer ous pieces of wood andde tri tus ap pear. Chan nel al lu via are cov ered bythick se ries of fine clastic, overbank de pos its with bur ied soils. In this se ries one can dis tin guish sev -eral mem bers. The lower one (depth 3.05–4.35 m) is built of silts with dis tinct re mains of gley pro -cesses. Above, a thick layer of bur ied soil (depth1.85–3.05 m) oc curs, well de vel oped, with pris -matic struc tures. That tes ti fies for a lon ger pe riodof time of soil and depositional pro cesses workedhere si mul ta neously and stayed in the rel a tiveequi lib rium. Grey brown silty groundmass oc curs in all the thin sec tions. The coarse ma te rial con -sists of rough quartz grains; with very rare feld -spars, micas and glaukonites. In humic ho ri zonwell de com posed, amor phous hu mus is dom i nantin groundmass and plant frag ments with well pre -served tis sue struc ture oc cur. Diagenetic pro -cesses are in di cated by typ i cal iron nod ules vis i -ble in thin sec tions. Clay coat ings in chan nels arewell pre served but in the bot tom clay move mentis weakly de vel oped. On the ba sis of micromor-phological data we conclude that brown soilforming with lessivé processes took place here(Fig. 7: 1).

In the lower part of this layer (depth 2.95 m)bones, daub, Neo lithic pot tery and charcoals were found in situ. Charcoals were dated at 6,130±40BP (Poz-22366). This soil de vel oped dur ing themid-Ho lo cene as a typ i cal fluvisol, to at least5,830±40 BP (Poz-22256). This date marks thetop level. How ever, this date is pos si bly slightlyolder when com pared to the real age of the layer,


160 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 6. Kladzany 2007A pro file and grain size com po si tion with Falk-Ward pa ram e ter dis tri bu tion of sed i ments.Sed i ments: A – grav els and sands, B – grav els and sands with silty ad mix ture, C – silty sands, D – silts; E – clayeysilts, F – bur ied soils; Frac tions: 1 – coarse gravel, 2 – mid dle and fine gravel, 3 – coarse sand, 4 – mid dle sand, 5 –fine sand (2 to 4j), 6 – coarse and me dium silt (4 to 6j), 7 – fine silt (6 to 8j), 8 – clay (above 8j); Folk-Ward dis -tri bu tion pa ram e ters: Mz – mean size di am e ter, dI – stan dard de vi a tion, SkI – skew ness, KG – kurtosis


Fig. 7. Kladzany. Thin sec tions of the sed i ments from the Ondava river val ley. 1. Brown soil with lessive pro -cesses; pll – plane po lar ized light, xpl – cross po lar ized light, c – clay coat ings, ch – chan nel, i – iron impregrationof groundmass. 2. Bur ied soil. Grey-or ange groundmass with weakly de vel oper lessive pro cesses; pll – plane po lar -ized light, xpl – cross po lar ized light, m – groundmass, o – or ganic mat ter in chan nel, n – amiboidal iron nod ules. 3. Soil ho ri zon from the depth of 0.5–0.8 m; pll – plane po lar ized light, xpl – cross po lar ized light, m – groundmass, n– typic iron nod ules, c – clay coat ings

as the soil fos sil iza tion should be dated to the de -cline of At lan tic pe riod. This soil was cov eredwith thick (depth 0.8–1.85 m) overbank de pos its.In thin sec tion from the bur ied soil, the grey-or -ange groundmass con sists of un sorted quartzgrains and silty un dif fer en ti ated ma te rial. Thereare well pre served pedo- and diagenetic pro -cesses, rep re sented by typ i cal, amboidal anddigitate iron nod ules, iron hypocoatings in chan -nel and or ange groundmass sat u rated by iron hy -drox ides. Clay move ments in thin sec tion arepoorly de vel oped. In groundmass traces of freshbi o log i cal ac tiv ity oc cur like earth worms fillingin channel or fresh organic matter (Fig. 7: 2).

In the up per part of this mem ber a soil withpris matic struc ture was re corded (depth 0.5–0.8m), how ever it is more weakly de vel oped than themid-Ho lo cene soil. In the thin sec tion from thisdepth the groundmass is sim i lar to the above. Dia- ge netic pro cesses com monly oc cur. There are typ -i cal iron nod ules, iron and clay hypocoatings inchan nels and rarely on min eral grains. Apperingclay coat ings are de formed or de stroyed (Fig. 7:3). The top of this soil was dated at 3,140±35 BP(Poz-22254) and it be came fos sil ized by the siltyoverbank de pos its (depth 0.0–0.5 m). In the top of this mem ber an A ho ri zon of pres ent-day soil isweakly readable.

The lower mor pho log i cal ter race is cut andfilled within the older and youn ger por tions of thehigher ter race, as re corded in the main out crop inKladzany (‘Kladzany 2007B’). Al lu via of this ter -race are only partly de pos ited within the re mainsof the higher ter race. The ero sive base rock isbuilt of chan nel grav els (depth 4.15–4.6 m) andabove the rem nants of the sed i ments filled in theLate Gla cial palaeochannel (depth 3.8–4.15 m),dated to 10,940±50 BP (Poz-22367). The up perpart of this palaeochannel fill is prob a bly the or i -gin of ir reg u lar clay frag ments and clay ballsfound in the pro file ‘Kladzany 2007A’, be causethis base de posit is eroded by the se ries of youn -ger grav elly-sandy chan nel al lu via (depth 0.7–3.8 m). In their pre cincts ap pear small interbeddings(10–35 cm) of silts or sandy silts. The top mostpro file is silty overbank se ries (depth 0.0–0.7 m).The youn gest ac cu mu la tion within this mor pho -log i cal ter race con sti tute chan nel al lu via with nu -mer ous subfossil trees in the low est part and withbones in the up per part, lo cated on the border

between channel and overbank sediments(‘Kladzany I’).

The gen eral struc ture of the river val ley nearKladzany (Fig. 8) re cords the ero sional phase ofthe end of the Pleis to cene, which eroded the Ter -tiary base rock and cut the east ern part of the val -ley form ing a deep de pres sion (palaeochanneldated at 10,940±50 BP). In the Early Ho lo cenethe Ondava river cut off dur ing lat eral mi gra tionthe up per part of palaeochannel fill, and as a re sult clay balls (9,940±50 BP) be came in cluded in theyoun ger channel alluvia.

At the be gin ning of the Neo lithic the level ofthe floodplain was lower by about 3 m com par ingto the pres ent-day bot tom of the val ley. This plainwas prob a bly al ready ex ploited by hu mans in thatpe riod, judged on the ba sis of sev eral ar chae o log -i cal sites linked to the early AVK, lo cated on themid dle Ondava river (Šiška, 1989). Di rect con fir -ma tions of hu man pres ence are pro vided by ce -ram ics found in situ in the lower part of fos sil soildated at 6,130±40 BP.

Dur ing the Neo lithic we note a slow pro cessof aggradation (1.2 m of sed i ment) sincesoil-form ing “kept up” with the sedimentation.A change in the rhythm of overbank de po si tionoc curred af ter 5,830±40 BP, which led to the fos -sil iza tion of the soil by over 1 m thick layer ofsilts. It is dif fi cult to de ter mine whether it is re -lated to hu man ac tiv ity, but it is worth not ing thatthe above date sets roughly the be gin ning of theEneolithic. In the East ern Slovakian Low land, incon trast to other re gions of east ern Slovakia, thispe riod (rep re sented by Tiszapolgár, Bodrogkere-sztúr, and es pe cially Baden cul ture) is not as so ci -ated with de mon stra ble de crease of hu man set tle -ment (Pavúk, 2004). How ever, a dis tinct in ten si fi -ca tion of hu man pres ence is vis i ble only in theBronze Age (es pe cially the Otomani, Suciu deSus, and Gava cul tures) (Gašaj, 2004). What ismore im por tant, the lo ca tion of pro files in Kla-dzany ba si cally re cords the sit u a tion in ar easnorth of the East ern Slovakian Low land where ar -chae o log i cal re mains of Eneolithic set tle ment arescanty (till the pe riod covered by Eastern Slova-kian Barrows culture, i.e. the very end of theEneolithic).

The next phase of sta bi li za tion dated to thelater Subboreal pe riod is doc u mented by the up -per soil that was fos sil ized dur ing the phase of

162 M. Nowak et al.

floods (3,140±35 BP), well re corded in nu mer ousval leys of Cen tral Eu rope (Kalicki, 2006). Thissoil re sulted from brown soil for ma tion withtraces of lessivé pro cesses in wet con di tions, asev i denced by well-de vel oped pre cip i ta tion of iron ox ides. In the Late Ho lo cene a se ries of al lu viabuild ing a lower mor pho log i cal ter race ap peared.

The type of the sed i ments, dom i nated by chan neland over overbank fa cies con firm a greater flowwithin the river chan nel, which has been nar -rowed and sta bi lized by resistant to side erosionfine clastic series.

In sum, we would like to em pha size that thestudy area was a mo saic land scape con sist ing of


Fig. 8. Gen eral sec tion across the Ondava river val ley near Kladzany (A) and sche matic sec tion of flood plainwith stud ied pro files (B). 1 – bed rock (Badenian), 2 – bed rock (Karpatian), 3 – bed rock – Kladzany for ma tion(Karpatian), 4 – coarse grav els with sands, 5 – grav els with sands, 6 – sands, 7 – silty sands, 8 – sandy silts, 9 – silts, 10 – clayey silts, 11 – silts with hor i zon tal beding, 12 – bur ied soils, 13 – clay balls, 14 – subfossil trees, 15 – de tri -tus, 16 – charcoals, 17 – bones, 18 – pot tery, 19 – faults (af ter Baòacký et al., 1987), 20 – supossed faults (af terBaòacký et al., 1987)

the up per parts of Pozdišovsky Ridge en vi ron -ment, the en vi ron ment of its lower slope parts and fi nally a very dy namic al lu vial en vi ron ment. Wees ti mate that dur ing the At lan tic pe riod such aneco log i cal mo saic was more dis tinct for hu manper cep tion than the cen tral and south ern parts ofthe Great Hungarian.

ANTHROPOGENIC FEA TURES

Over 2000 sq m of the site area have been ex -ca vated (Figs 9, 10). More over, in the vi cin ity ofthe site a dozen of trial trenches were made in or -der to ob tain geo log i cal and geomorphologicaldata.

In the ar chae o log i cally in ves ti gated sec tionof the set tle ment al most 40 anthropogenic fea -tures sunk into the ground were iden ti fied. Gen er -ally, they are char ac ter ized by the pres ence ofgrey-black clayey fill ing. In some of the pits thelower part had a more in ten sive sooty color. Thefea tures could be seen at the level of 30–40 cm;they were sunk to max i mum 110–120 cm fromthe ground surface.

In terms of shape and di men sions, four dis -tinct types of fea tures can be dis tin guished:

1. The rel a tively large (about 1.5–5 m indiam eter) and me dium-size (up to 1.5 m in di am e -ter) trough-like fea tures, cir cu lar or oval in out -line (2/99A, 2/99B, 2/2000, 8/2000, 2/01, 4/01,8/01, 9/01, 2/02, 3/02, 4/02, 4/03). An ex cep tional struc ture in this cat e gory is fea ture 1/01 be causeits for ma tion is clearly multiphase, while its fill -ing con tained al most no ma te rial finds. Pos si bly,this part of the site was in ten tion ally pro tectedfrom dumping or leaving rubbish.

2. The small fea tures (4/99, 1/2000, 7/01)with a large num ber of daub pieces and dis tincttraces of fire (red dish color of the fill ing, char-coals and ashes). It seems that fea ture 1/2000 canbe in ter preted as the re mains of an oval, trough-shaped hearth which was ac com pa nied by a struc -ture made of clay or lined with clay. Such an in -ter pre ta tion is fur ther sup ported by the pres enceof a very hard, burnt layer of clay in the floor ofthe pit, which – in ad di tion – was paved withsherds. How ever, it is dif fi cult to ex plain the sit u -a tion found in fea tures 4/99 and 7/01. The lay outof lumps of daub and the pres ence of un dam agedand un burnt ob sid ian artefacts do not al low us toin ter pret the fea tures as re mains of hearths. Hy po -thet i cally, these might be re mains of a con struc -

164 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 9. Dis tri bu tion of ex ca va tion trenches within the site


Fig. 10. Dis tri bu tion of ex ca va tion units and anthropogenic fea tures in the cen tral part of the site

tion (a wall, a fence, the roof of a dome oven?)faced with clay that slid or fell into the small pits.

3. Pits are spots where wooden posts weresunk (post-holes). The most ev i dent ex am ples arefea tures 3/2000, 9/2000, 1/03, 2/03, 2/06 and3/06, pos si bly also 1/02, 2/07, 3/07. They are ei -ther round or oval in the hor i zon tal and con i cal inthe ver ti cal cross-sec tion. They were sunk to adepth of up to about 90–100 cm from to day’sground sur face, and mea sure about 50–60 cm indi am e ter. No finds were dis cov ered in their fill -ing. Micromorphological anal y ses car ried out byK. Fechner from Université Libré de Brussellesshowed that the edges of the pits had beenrammed down. This con firms the hy poth e sis thatthe fea tures are post-holes and their edges werebeaten when the wooden posts were be ing driveninto the ground. Small, cir cu lar, gray ish ar eas,whose thick ness is not very large (10–15 cm) reg -is tered in trench C (fea tures 4, 5 and 6/2000) andin sec tion 3/2001 in trench F (fea tures 5/01, 6/01,5/02, 6/02) could also con sti tute re mains ofwooden posts sunk into shal low holes. Even if the lat ter struc tures are taken into ac count, the lay-out of all the post-holes does not form any regularpattern.

4. In re spect to size ex cep tional struc tures are1/98 (within trench G), 3/01, 10/01, and 1/06. Inthe hor i zon tal out line their shape ap proach an ir -reg u lar, elon gated tra pe zium or oval. The fill ingwas uni form, grey-black, with nu mer ous sherds,ob sid ian finds, lumps of daub and charcoals. Afunc tional in ter pre ta tion of a fea ture of this typeen coun ters ob vi ous dif fi cul ties. Due to the con -sid er able size, a ten ta tive ex pla na tion is plau si ble, namely that they were the re mains of semi-dug out dwell ings. Sim i lar, large, trough-like fea tures inthe set tle ments of the AVK are in ter preted in pre -cisely this way (e.g. Makkay, 1982; Šiška, 1989).The sup po si tion that the fea ture de scribed abovemight be a hab i ta tion struc ture seems to be con -firmed by the pres ence of pro tru sions spaced outreg u larly along the out line of fea ture 3/01. Theycan be viewed as post-holes ar ranged along theedges of the fea ture. On the other hand, thesepost-holes could con sti tute the re mains of adwell ing (hut) sit u ated next to the pit un der dis -cus sion. A large num ber of daub pieces found inthese fea tures, es pe cially in 1/98, which couldhave been a re mains of ei ther plas tered, clayey

floor or a struc ture that had stand at the edge of apit and col lapsed in wards may also point at dwell -ing func tion of such fea tures. On the other hand,the nar row ing of the some fea tures in their south -ern parts does not quite point to a hab i ta tion struc -ture; the fea tures seem to be too nar row for ahouse in this part. For these rea sons we sug gestthat fea tures of the sort are the re mains of a clayex trac tion pits, i.e. long, ir reg u lar pits for the ex -trac tion of clay which was used, first of all, forfac ing walls of post-houses. Af ter the ex trac tionthey could have been used as rub bish-pits. Pits ofsuch type, lo cated along lon ger walls of suchhouses oc cur fre quently in the set tle ments of theLBK (e.g. Lenneis, 2001); re cently such fea tureshave also been dis cov ered in the East ern Lin earcon text (Domboróczki, 2001). Al though at Mora- vany we did not dis cover any ev i dent traces ofpost-houses on ei ther side of the afore men tionedfea tures, yet this does not totally disqualify theinterpretation offered above; remains of suchhouses may have been completely removed byerosional processes.

It should be em pha sized that strati graphi calre la tions be tween the fea tures are rare. There areonly two sit u a tion of the kind, i.e. be tween fea -tures 2/2000 and 8/2000 and be tween fea tures2/01 and 10/01. On the whole, this might sug gestthat the site at Moravany is a sin gle-phase set tle-ment.

POT TERY

As ero sional pro cesses re moved the cul turelayer as so ci ated with the Neo lithic set tle ment,finds were pre served only in the fill ing of the pitsand in other de pres sions in the ground sur face ofthe site.

The group of ce ram ics ob tained so far in theex ca va tions com prises nearly 8,000 pot sherds and sev eral dozen of mis cel la neous clay finds. Thema jor ity of pot sherds (ca. 75%) come from onlyfive fea tures (1/98, 2/99A, 3/01, 2/01, 4/01, 1/06). The re main ing fea tures yielded only small quan ti -ties of ce ramic frag ments (from sev eral to sev eraldozen of items). Al though not a sin gle ves sel hasbeen wholly pre served, yet the de gree of frag men -ta tion is not con sid er able. Con se quently, the in -dex of di ag nos tic fea tures of clay ves sels shouldbe estimated as relatively high.

166 M. Nowak et al.

Pot tery tech nol ogyThe min er al og i cal and tech no log i cal anal y ses

were car ried out on the Neo lithic pot tery sherdsfrom Moravany and on the clay sam ples col lectedon the site. They in cluded: 1) mea sure ments ofwated absorbtion, 2) de ter mi na tions of ex pan sionand shrink age (dilatometry), 3) de ter mi na tions ofphase com po si tion useing X-ray dif frac tion anal -y sis (XRD), scan ning elec tron mi cros copy(SEM), the lat ter sup ported by spot chem i calanal y sis and ther mal anal y sis (DTA), 4) chem i calde ter mi na tions us ing in duc tively cou pled plasma– atomic emis sion spec tros copy (ICP-AES).None of these meth ods is uni ver sal but each ofthem helps find an an swer to some of the ques -tions posed.

The wa ter ab sorp tion of the pot tery sam plesis 22–34% and tes ti fies to their high po ros ity. Itmeans that a de gree of fir ing of the clay out ofwhich the pot tery had been made was low, and –con se quently – the tem per a ture of fir ing was nottoo high. The wa ter ab sorp tion of the fired clayscol lected on the site is much lower (12–13%). Itmay be ex plained by much better ho mog e ni za tion of the ce ramic body in the lab o ra tory ex per i -ments. There fore, if we as sume that the Neo lithicpot tery was man u fac tured from lo cal raw ma te ri -als, the clays for mak ing vessels must have beendeliberately prepared.

The phase com po si tion of the Neo lithicsherds is sim i lar in all the cases (Fig. 11). Themass for fir ing ves sels was com posed of clay min -er als (mainly of illite) with an ad mix ture of quartz and mi nor feld spars and fer rous ox ides, the samemin er als that have been found in the lo cal clays. It sug gests that these clays could have been used toman u fac ture the Moravany ceramic vessels.

The con cen tra tion of P2O5 in the sherds is sig -nif i cantly higher than that in the clays (1.14–6.38and 0.31%, re spec tively), as re sults from bothbulk chem i cal anal y ses and the SEM/EDS spotanal y ses of the Neo lithic sherds. Higher con tentsof phos pho rus have been found par tic u larly in thesherds that re veal the pres ence of highly po rous,sponge-like, most prob a bly or ganic frag ments(Fig. 12). Their pores are ar ranged in the form ofpar al lel tubes with oval cross-sec tions that re sem -ble the pores oc cur ring in bone tis sue (Baslé et al.1998; Pawlikowski and NiedŸwiedzki, 2002).Such a the sis would re quire fur ther, more de tailed

anal y sis on more abun dant re search ma te rial col -lected from other ar che o log i cal sites. These or -ganic struc tures may just as well rep re sent thefrag ments of or ganic tem per that was pur poselyadded to the clay mass and which can be ob served with the na ked eye in some sherds. An other ex -pla na tion is based on the etnographically con -firmed (Ho³ubowicz, 1950) habit of mixing claywith organic substances, such as excrements.

Re gard less of the or ganic tem per, the earlyNeo lithic pot tery from Moravany re veals a unique tech no log i cal fea ture: add ing of crushed, of tencoarse-grained rock frag ments into the ce ramicmass as a tem per. Among them, frag ments ofquartz ite, Ondava hornstone and, pos si bly, ob sid -ian have been iden ti fied. These rocks were alsoused by the in hab it ants of the set tle ment to makechipped tools. Such a min eral tem per has been re -corded in all the sherds found on the site, both inthin- and in thick-walled frag ments. Be sides thecrushed rocks, some pot tery frag ments con tain anadmixture of broken sherds.

The dilatometric curves of the an a lyzedsherds (Figs 13; 14A) clearly dem on strate that the na ture of the changes on heat ing, i.e. ex pan -sion/shrink age, is sim i lar. Ap prox i mate fir ingtem per a tures of the Moravany ves sels, de ter min -ing ac cord ing to Wirska-Parachoniak (1980),range be tween 800 and 900°C. How ever, ana lys -ing the dilatometric curves of the clay sam ples 11, 12, 13 and 14 fired at 600, 700, 800 and 900°C,re spec tively, it is seen that three of them break al -most at the same tem per a ture, i.e., around 850°C,and the fourth (sam ple 14) at around 900°C. Itmeans that there is no de pend ance be tween thefir ing tem per a ture and the tem per a ture at whichdilatometric curves break, which chal lenges themethod of tem per a ture es ti ma tion used byWirska-Parachoniak (1980). Con sid er ing this dis -crep ancy, es tab lish ing the ex act tem per a tures ofthe pot tery man u fac tur ing by the Moravany popu- lation remains an open question.

Pot tery mor phol ogy and or na men ta tionThe pot tery ob tained so far from the site falls

into seven ba sic mor pho log i cal types (Kaczanow- ska et al., 2002; 2003; Šiška, 1989).

1. Hol low-ped es talled bowlsThe ev i dence of the pres ence of such bowls is


168 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 11. X-ray pow der dif frac tion pat terns of a clay sam ple from the site (A) and the pot tery sam ples 2 and 4 (Band C re spec tively)


Fig. 12. A. An SEM im age of the pot tery sam ple 1. A highly po rous, sponge-like, most prob a bly or ganic frag ment with tu bu lar, par al lel ar ranged pores oc cu pies the cen tral and right sides of the mi cro graph (around point 1). B. El e -men tal com po si tion of the frag ment in ques tion; the place of the EDS anal y sis marked with a cir cle

170 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 13. Dilatometric curves of sam ples of thick-walled pot tery (A – sam ples 1–5) and me dium-walled pot tery (B– sam ples 6–8). Ab bre vi a tion: pr. – sam ple


Fig. 14. Dilatometric curves of thin-walled pot tery (A – sam ples 9, 10) and the clay sam ples from the Moravany(B – sam ples 11–14, fired at 600, 700, 800, and 900 °C re spec tively). Ab bre vi a tion: pr. – sam ple

172 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 15. Se lected pot tery. Scale: a – 1–3, 6, 7, 9; b – 4, 5; c – 8

thin-walled sherds of the part be tween the hol lowped es tal and the bowl proper. The di am e ter ofthese parts of bowls is from 5 to 8 cm (Fig. 16: 6;18: 7, 9). Al though the spec i mens un der de scrip -tion have been pre served only as frag ments, wecan iden tify ves sels with con i cal and slightlybell-shaped ped es tals. The bowls are, mainly,char ac ter ized by the rect an gu lar out line of rims. It should be ex plained, how ever, that the frag mentsof rims from hol low-ped es talled bowls can not al -ways be dis tin guished from flat-based bowls withsim i lar rims, from con i cal bowls, or deep, glob u -lar bowls. The state of pres er va tion of the outersur face of thin-walled pots does not al low to re -con struct, with few ex cep tions (Fig. 18: 5), theirpainted dec o ra tions. The or na ment of thin in cisedpar al lel lines (Fig. 17: 4) or a me an der pat tern isrel a tively fre quent. A pos si bil ity that the thin in -cised or na ments were ac com pa nied by black paint (which is typ i cal for the early phase of the AVK –e.g. Vizdal, 1997: fig. 11: 1, 2, 3a, 3b) cannot beexcluded, but the black paint has not beenpreserved at Moravany.

2. Con i cal bowlsThe iden ti fied sherds of this type of pots have

rect an gu lar rims. Only the small est bowls in thisgroup have round rims (Vizdal, 1998: fig. 4: 1).Prob a bly, the bowls var ied a great deal in re spectof height and di am e ter. Be cause the soil con di -tions on the site were “ag gres sive,” the blackpaint that must have been pres ent has not beenpreserved.

3. Deep, glob u lar bowlsPots as cribed to this group vary in size. The

rims are rect an gu lar with the ex cep tion of thesmall est bowls. These bowls have mild S-shapedpro files. The lower part of the belly of thesebowls was dec o rated with plas tic knobs. Theyhad, some times, a hor i zon tal per fo ra tion (Fig. 16:4) (to de scribe such knobs as “han dles” would bein cor rect). The bowls were dec o rated with an in -cised or na ment (Fig. 15: 3); spo rad i cally traces ofblack paint have been preserved.4. Bowls with con spic u ous col lars (this group ishet er o ge neous as one at trib ute brings to getherves sels that are in fact dif fer ent; how ever, this cat -e gory has been com monly ac cepted in the lit er a -ture, e.g. Šiška, 1989: 68).

To this group are as cribed small ves sels withcol lars (Fig. 17: 1, 7) and glob u lar vases. Theircom mon fea ture is the rect an gu lar cross-sec tionof the belly and a cy lin dri cal col lar. Such a shapeof the belly was prob a bly ob tained by push ing thewalls of the ves sel out wards from the in side. Thebel lies are ad di tion ally marked by flat knobs.Small, looped han dles also oc cur. On the outersur faces of the ves sels faint traces of black-painted or na ments have been pre served. Sherds of a small ves sel are dec o rated with and un char ac ter -is tic in cised or na ment (Fig. 17: 1). Frag ments of a large vase-like ves sel show a very well-pre servedblack-painted or na ment of broad, wavy bands and thin par al lel lines (Fig. 17: 3). This ves sel wasmade of clay with al most no tem per, which is ex -cep tional at Moravany. We could even speak,tentatively, about an imported item in this case.

5. Bar rel-shaped potsTo this group be long me dium- and thick-

walled sherds of bar rel-shaped pots dis tin guishedby a very high con tent of min eral and or ganictem per. These sherds were dis cov ered in fea tures1/98 (in trench G), 2/99A, 3/01 and 2/01. Themost com mon dec o ra tion are im pres sions (Figs15: 2; 18: 6) or a com bi na tion of im pres sions andin ci sions (Figs 15: 1; 18: 4). A dec o ra tion ofslant ing, short, in cised lines is also pres ent (Fig.18: 3). More over, prac ti cally each ves sel of thistype had dou ble, plas tic knobs lo cated in theupper part (Fig. 16: 3).

6. Stor age ves selsIn fea tures 1/98 and 3/01 thick-walled sherds

of stor age ves sels were dis cov ered. To this groupbe long sherds with plas tic bands, dec o rated withround or oval im pres sions (Figs 15: 4; 16: 5), alsosherds with an or na ment of sole fin ger-im pres -sions (Fig. 18: 8). The ce ram ics in fea ture 1/98had a dec o ra tion of flat, round plas tic bosses withan ad di tional, small boss in the cen tre (Fig. 15: 5). The sur face of these ves sels was in ten tion allyrough ened by, prob a bly, using fingers (Fig. 16:7).

7. Low, thick-walled bowls (roast ing pans)Among bowls of this type there are con i cal

(Fig. 15: 8) as well as slightly rounded forms (Fig. 15: 7). A frag ment of a ves sel that can be as cribed


174 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 16. Se lected pot tery. Scale: a – 1, 4, 6, 8; b – 2, 3, 5; c – 7


Fig. 17. Se lected pot tery. Scale: a – 1, 5, 6; b – 2, 4; c – 3, 7

176 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 18. Se lected pot tery. Scale: a – 1a, 1b, 2, 7, 9; b – 3, 4, 6; c – 5, 8

to this group co mes from a min ia ture bowlet (Fig.16: 8).

It seems that the fre quency of the blackpainted dec o ra tions was high. How ever the stateof pres er va tion of the outer sur face of al most allthin-walled ves sels (hol low-ped es talled bowlsand some con i cal bowls) and thick-walled col -lared vases does not al low to re con struct – withfew ex cep tions – their painted dec o ra tions. Theor na ment of thin in cised par al lel lines (Figs 15: 3;17: 2, 4, 6; 18: 4) is rel a tively fre quent but widein cised lines (al most grooves) also oc cur (Figs 15: 1; 16: 1, 2). The most com mon dec o ra tion of thethick-walled ves sels are im pres sions or a com bi -na tion of im pres sions and in ci sions (Figs 15: 1;18: 4) as well as a dec o ra tion con sist ing of short,in cised lines (Fig. 18: 3). There are also plas ticbands with finger impressions (Figs 15: 9; 16: 5).

Small, mis cel la neous clay artefacts are rep re -sented by items with a dec o ra tive func tion such as clay pen dants of an al most round shape, pieces ofa clay arm let, a pen dant in the shape of a tooth(Fig. 18: 1), and an awk wardly formed (?) ob jectin the shape of a rod (?) (Fig. 18: 2).

Chrono-cul tural set ting of the pot teryThe anal y sis of at trib utes of the pot tery from

Moravany shows that this pot tery should be as -cribed to the early Neo lithic, and more pre ciselyto the East ern Lin ear Pot tery cul ture. In M.Vizdal’s opin ion these ce ram ics should be con -nected to the Kopèany group, which term re fers to the early phase of the AVK in the East ern Slova-kian Low land (Kalicz and Makkay, 1977: 18–37;Šiška, 1989: 58–74; Vizdal, 1997: 44). How ever,among the ce ramic finds we can iden tify spec i -mens with more ar chaic fea tures and with youn -ger fea tures. The for mer ones, which are slightlysim i lar to the Körös-Cris at trib utes, in clude: 1)high fre quency of the thick-walled pot tery withim pres sions, 2) rec ti lin ear, black-painted mo tifs,3) broad in ci sions, 4) plas tic belts with fin ger im -pres sions, 5) fin ger im pres sions and short, in cised lines. As to the lat ter ones we should men tion: 1)thin in ci sions, 2) vases with high, cy lin dri calneck, 3) spi ral and wavy, black-painted or na -ments (close to the or na ments of the Raškovcegroup – Šiška, 1989: 91–101). In such a sit u a tionthere ap pears a risk of a sub jec tive se lec tion ofcer tain fea tures and over es ti ma tion of fea tures

con sid ered to be typ i cal of one or an other cul turegroup. Our in ten tion is not to ques tion the meth -od ol ogy used so far for the dis tin guish ing of tax o -nomic (“cul tural”) units and phases, but to pointto “ex cep tions” which – af ter all – oc cur reg u larly and do not cor re spond to the ac cepted models.

CHIPPED STONE ARTEFACTSMa jor tech no log i cal group struc ture

The in ves ti gated se ries of 4386 chipped stone artefacts in cluded: 159 cores and frag ments(3.63%), 1647 flakes (37.5%), 1063 blades(24.2%), 996 chips (22.8%) from re touch or prep -a ra tion, 468 tools (10.6%). There were, be sides,42 fine frag ments of artefacts that are dif fi cult toas sign to one of the enu mer ated groups, and 2hammerstones, 7 peb ble frag ments and a lump ofdye.

The in ven tory struc ture, dom i nated by flakes, is in dic a tive of on-site lo cal work ing of raw ma te -ri als in a full cy cle. Pos si bly, some re duc tion cy -cles (no ta bly with the use of a hard ham mer) wereex e cuted by poorly trained knappers, whereas thepres ence of a num ber of cores re duced by meansof pres sure tech nique in di cates that this is thework of spe cial ized knappers. We won derwhether the pres ence of spe cial ized knappers canbe iden ti fied as a par tic u lar phase of set tle mentfunc tion ing, or whether the two forms of pro duc -tion: spe cial ized and do mes tic co-oc curred dur ing the oc cu pa tion. The high stan dard of skills of thein hab it ants of the set tle ment is con firmed by thefact that a rel a tively small num ber of cores wereex ploited in blank pro duc tion. On av er age, about20 blades were ob tained from one core (chips ex -clud ing) i.e. the num ber close to the num ber ofblades ob tained in the work shop-next-to-mine inpit 1 at the mid dle Neo lithic Lengyel culture siteat S¹spów (21 blades – Dzieduszycka-Machni-kowa and Lech, 1976).

Raw ma te ri alsA va ri ety of raw ma te ri als were ex ploited at

the site, of which ob sid ian was the most im por -tant. It was used to pro duce as much as 88.8% ofall the artefacts. Ob sid ian was sup plied to the sitein the form of un worked con cre tions from its de -posit ar eas lo cated at about 60 km to south-west.Among other rocks there were: limnoquartzites


(3.4%), radiolarites (2.8%), and Ondava horn-stone (1.6%). In ad di tion to these raw ma te ri alsin di vid ual artefacts were re corded at Moravanythat were made from 16 other si li ceous rocks, oreven, oc ca sion ally, sed i men tary rocks, whose de -posit ar eas in most cases have not been iden ti fied.Of spe cial in ter est is the dis cov ery of a tra pezemade from choc o late flint whose de pos its are lo -cated at the north ern edge of the Holy CrossMountains in Po land, and a blade from Cre ta -ceous flint from de pos its in the Volhynia–PodolePla teau (West ern Ukraine). These two artefactscon firm the ex is tence of long-dis tance in di rect(me di ated) ex change with early farm ing LBKcom mu ni ties in the Vistula and in the Dniesterbas ins.

CoresThe col lec tion con tained 159 cores: 130 in -

tact spec i mens and 29 frag ments. In terms of rawma te rial struc ture ob sid ian cores are most fre -quent (125 spec i mens – 78.6%), fol lowed bycores from limnoquartzites (20 – 12.6%) of which 5 spec i mens were from Boldogkövarálja type.Cores from other rook types are much less fre -quent: radiolarite (9 – 5.7%), Ondava type horn-stone (3 – 1.9%), and in di vid ual spec i mens fromquartz and white patinated flint (Ju ras sic or er -ratic). When the vari abil ity of raw ma te ri als in the group of cores (6 types) is com pared with raw ma -te ri als vari abil ity in the group of tools and debi-tage (21 types) it can be seen that only some of the ex ploited rocks, most fre quently ob sid ians andlimnoquartzites, were used on-site in the full cy -cle of pro cess ing, be gin ning from cores.

In the case of ob sid ian cor ing tech niques rep -re sent dif fer ent tech no log i cal so phis ti ca tion. Two types of core re duc tion can be dis tin guished de -pend ing on the method of blank de tach ment: 1)core re duc tion based on the use of a hard ham mer, or a punch, 2) core re duc tion by means ofpressure technique.

In the first type core re duc tion com prised thefol low ing types of op er a tional se quences:

A. A sim ple se quence of mixed flake (moreof ten) or blade (less of ten) de tach ments on small(2–3 cm high) chunks or ob sid ian con cre tions;blades or flakes were de tached af ter the plat formhad been shaped by a sin gle blow, on a flat orslightly con vex flak ing sur face (Fig. 19: 1–5),

B. A se quence rep re sented by rel a tivelysmall (2–4 cm) blade cores on ob sid ian con cre -tions with the base pre pared by sev eral scars,whereas the flak ing sur face, shaped by bladescars, ex tends onto core sides and the back (Fig.19: 6). One of these cores is flat, for flakes, withcen trip e tal re duc tion in the ad vanced phase, es pe -cially on the core back (Fig. 19: 7). Blade coreswere ex ploited by round ing the flak ing sur faceun til, in the re sid ual phase, a subdiscoidal shapewas ob tained (Fig. 20: 1),

C. A se quence rep re sented by a macrobladesubconical core, with the flak ing sur face ex tended onto core sides, and a pre pared plat form (Fig. 20:2). This core does not seem to be an ini tial form –lit tle re duced – be long ing to the pre vi ous group.In all like li hood, in an early phase of re duc tion,the core was brought from a work shop next to de -pos its of Carpathian ob sid ian type 1.

D. A se quence rep re sented by a group ofdou ble-plat form cores for flakes, also small (2–3.5 cm) in di am e ter (Fig. 20: 3, 4), that in the fi nal phase of re duc tion were subdiscoidal and, thentrans formed into splint ered pieces (Pl. 2: 6),

E. Cores on flakes; this se quence is rep re -sented by a core for blades (made on the nar rowface of a flake – Fig. 21: 1) and three cores forflakes with the flak ing sur face in stalled on theven tral side (Fig. 21: 2–4).

Core re duc tion by pres sure tech nique is doc u -mented by a rel a tively small group of blade cores,mainly cy lin dri cal, some times subconical. Thesecores are small (2.5–4.2 cm), but this could re sultfrom the fact that they rep re sent, in most cases, re -sid ual phases of re duc tion. Less ex ploited is asubconical core with eight blade scars on the con -vex sur face and an at tempt – nearly failed – atplat form re ju ve na tion in or der to ob tain an acutecor ing an gle (Fig. 21: 5). An other core is re sid ual, cy lin dri cal, with the plat form care fully pre paredby cen trip e tal blows and de tach ments on the plat -form edge. The flak ing sur face is al most com -pletely rounded, with only a small cor ti cal area ofthe sur face left (Fig. 21: 6). An other core of thistype has two con vex flak ing sur faces: on one sidethere are ear lier blade scars par tially cut when theplat form was re ju ve nated; as a re sult an ob tusecor ing an gle was formed, on the other side (where re duc tion could not con tin ued when a large flakehad been de tached re mov ing blade scars) the cor -

178 M. Nowak et al.


Fig. 19. Se lected chipped artefacts. Cores

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Fig. 20. Se lected chipped artefacts. Cores


Fig. 21. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–8 – cores, 9 – overpassed flake

ing an gle re mained acute (Fig. 21: 7). An other re -sid ual blade core was a dou ble-plat form spec i men with unique traces of postero-lat eral prep a ra tion(Fig. 2l: 8). When con i cal blade cores were ex -ploited a prod uct of tech ni cal accidents wereoverpassed flakes that removed entire core tips(Fig. 21: 9; Fig. 22: 1).

A unique spec i men was a carinated mi cro-lithic core made on an ob sid ian chunk (Fig. 22: 2). Cores from other raw ma te ri als ev i dence the useof re duc tion se quences sim i lar to those used forob sid ian. Cores from limnoquartzite in cluded anini tial, sin gle-plat form spec i men; the plat form isun pre pared, the dis tal part with prep a ra tion, made on a plaquette (Fig. 22: 3), and a re sid ual,subconical sin gle-plat form core for blades andflakes (Fig. 22: 4). One of the cores made fromBoldogkövarálja limnoquartzite was re duced bymeans of pres sure tech nique; this is a subconicalcore for blades, strongly ex hausted: just as in thecase of ob sid ian cores on front side the plat formre ju ve na tion pro duced an ob tuse core an gle,whereas on the back side re duc tion was con tin ued af ter the platform had been rejuvenated (Fig. 22:5).

Cores made from radiolarite are all short (2–3 cm), for flakes, with un pre pared plat forms andbroad flak ing sur faces (Figs 22: 6, 7; 23:1). Coresmade from Ondava hornstone are ini tial, sin -gle-plat form, with out prep a ra tion (in clud ing plat -form), made on peb bles (Fig. 23: 2).

Sin gle-plat form cores (70.8%) are more nu -mer ous than dou ble-plat form spec i mens (only13.8%). Multiplatform cores (3.1%), with per pen -dic u lar scars (3.8%) and discoidal cores are muchless frequent.

As far as shape is con cerned the big gestgroup are flat and con i cal cores. Cy lin dri cal (themost reg u lar ob sid ian cores) and discoidal coresare few.

A spe cial, al though small, group of cores (3spec i mens) were bi po lar splint ered pieces on rel a -tively thick flakes from ob sid ian (Fig. 23: 3, 4)and limnoquartzite (Fig. 23: 5).

FlakesThe set tle ment at Moravany yielded 1647

flakes, most of them made from ob sid ian (86.2%). As much as 41.1% (678 spec i mens) are spec i -mens that have been pre served as frag ments, bro -

ken or frac tured. The pro por tion of flakes lessthan 2 cm long is fairly high (367 – 22.2%). De -tailed anal y sis was done on 506 in tact spec i mensmore than 2 cm long. The main body of theseflakes co mes from pre lim i nary phases of core ex -ploi ta tion, from decortication and the shap ing offlak ing sur faces and plat forms. Wholly cor ti calspec i mens are as much as 19.1% – which is ahigher pro por tion than at the Lengyel work shopclose to the mine at S¹spów, pit 1 (Dzieduszycka-Machnikowa and Lech, 1976) where cor ti calflakes ac count for 16.4% of all the spec i mens, orin the Bükk cul ture work shop from Humenne(12.9%) (Kaczanowska and Koz³owski, 2002).Non-cor ti cal spec i mens are 36.5% (185).

Anal y sis of the dor sal pat tern of flakes in di -cates that pre lim i nary prep a ra tion of cores con -sisted mainly in decortication by de tach ing a se -ries of flakes. Sub se quently re duc tion be gan. Amore com plex prep a ra tion was rarely used. It isdoc u mented by only 7 trim ming flakes. Nearlyhalf of the flakes ex hibit uni di rec tional dor sal and ven tral pat tern (239 – 47.2%). Only 15% (76spec i mens) are with a per pen dic u lar scar pat ternthat con firms change of orienta tion of cores.A more fre quent op er a tion was the shap ing orretrimming of the plat form, ev i denced by flakeswith cen trip e tal scars (42 – 8.3%), typ i cal tab lets(2 spec i mens) or small flakes from plat form re ju -ve na tion (13 – 2.6%). Some times, a core was alsoshort ened by re mov ing the whole flak ing sur faceand the distal end (5 overpassed flakes mentionedearlier – Figs 21: 9; 22: 1).

It should be re mem bered that part of theflakes were re-worked into re touched tools.Nearly a half of all the end-scrap ers were made on flakes. Also fre quent are flakes with re touch onsmaller or larger sec tions of lat eral edges (62spec i mens).

A large se ries of very fine chips (996 spec i -mens of which 90.9% were made of ob sid ian) was re corded, split off dur ing re touch or, more of ten,dur ing core ex ploi ta tion or re ju ve na tion. Theydoc u ment a full cy cle of tool pro duc tion and re ju -ve na tion on-site.

BladesBlades were pro duced al most only from ob -

sid ian. The an a lyzed 1063 blades and frag mentswere iden ti fied. As many as 1027 (96.6%) were

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Fig. 22. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1 – overpassed flake, 2–7 – cores

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Fig. 23. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–5 – cores, 6 – re fit ting of three blades from fea ture 1/98

made from ob sid ian. The pro por tion of this rawma te rial in the group of blades is dis tinctly higherthan its av er age pro por tion at the site.

Most blades have been pre served as frag -ments (804 spec i mens). In the group of frag mentsprox i mal parts pre dom i nate. Such pro por tion canbe seen not only at Neo lithic sites; the pre dom i -nance of prox i mal parts among frag ments wasreg is tered at Mesolithic sites in Po land (Schild etal., 1975: 19). Usu ally, blade frag men ta tion wasin ter preted as an op er a tion of cor rect ing the bladepro file to adapt it for use as tools (Kaczanowska,1971). In the case of Mesolithic sites Schild et al.(1975) are in clined to fa vor the point of viewhold ing that break ing was an in ten tional op er a -tion, whereas the lo ca tion of the break was ac ci -den tal. In the an a lyzed as sem blage prox i mal parts are most nu mer ous (389 spec i mens). There were223 mesial frag ments and 183 dis tal frag ments.Nat u rally, be sides the in ten tional op er a tion ofblade breaking, some blades were broken acci-den tally.

In the group of blades there were 20 spec i -mens whose dor sal sur face was en tirely cor ti cal.Al though the pro por tion of cor ti cal spec i mens inthe group of blades is lower than among flakes(3.9 and 19.2% re spec tively), yet it con firms thatsome cores had been ex ploited with out flak ingsur face prep a ra tion but us ing the cor ti cal bladetech nique, pos si bly af ter the plat form had beenpre pared. Af ter the first blade had been de tachedthe flak ing sur face was ex tended and blades withlat eral cor tex were ob tained (164 spec i mens, i.e.32.7% of the in tact blades). In the case of thismethod of core re duc tion the pro por tion of bladesmust have been rel a tively high, not much lowerthan that of flakes. For this rea son the pro por tionof both flakes and blades was in creased by add ing the spec i mens that were mod i fied by re touch:tools on blades and on flakes. Then the pro por tion of flakes be comes 39.2% whereas that of blades is as much as 33.2%. It seems likely, there fore, thata large part of cores for blade blanks wasexploited without preparation.

The dor sal side of ma jor ity of blanks havescars from ear lier de tach ments (283 spec i mens –56.3%). As a rule the scars are uni di rec tional (444 – 88.6%). There are only 11 blades with op po sitedor sal scars (2.2%). Among blades a group oftrim ming (9) and a group of sub-crested blades

(10) were iden ti fied. They could have been ei therpro duced away from the set tle ment and broughtto it as com pleted prod ucts, or two cor ing meth -ods may have ex isted on-site: with out pre lim i nary prep a ra tion (the most com mon type) and with thepre-core stage. The lat ter hy poth e sis seems moreplau si ble as nei ther the raw ma te ri als nor di men -sions in the case of trim ming, sub-crested, andcrested blades differ from other blades at the site.

Blades are usu ally small. The big gest groupcom prises of spec i mens from 2.5 to 4.5 cm long(310 spec i mens – 61.8%). The spec i mens lon gerthan 4.5 cm are only 14.2% of all the blades. Inthe group of lon gest blades items from raw ma te -ri als other than ob sid ian are more frequent.

Of par tic u lar in ter est are artefacts fromOndava hornstone. In fea ture 1/98 three slen derblades de tached from the same core and mak ing are fit were dis cov ered (Fig. 23: 6a–6c). In thesame fea ture, from the same core an other blademay have been de tached: slen der, elon gated.These blades were de tached from a core withprep a ra tion re stricted only to the platform.

The se ries con tained only a few blades(3.4%) with par al lel edges and interscar ridges,and the same thick ness of prox i mal and dis talparts. These blades must have been made us ing afairly ad vanced tech nique – pos si bly, this was,per fectly mas tered, punch tech nique, or, which isalso likely, the pres sure technique.

Re touched toolsEnd-scrap ers

At Moravany there were 29 end-scrap ers thatin terms of blank types can be di vided into twogroups:

1. End-scrap ers on blades (11), rep re sentedby 5 spec i mens on macroblades with fairly steep,weakly con vex fronts (Fig. 24: 1–4), 6 spec i mens, also on macroblades, whose prox i mal parts arebro ken off, with fine lat eral re touch semisteep and weakly con vex, steep fronts (Fig. 24: 5–10).Blade end-scrap ers were made from ob sid ian (6),radiolarite (3), and limnoquartzite (2).

2. End-scrap ers on macroflakes (9) with steep or semisteep, slightly con vex fronts (Fig. 24: 11–14), with prox i mal parts bro ken off. There werealso microflake spec i mens (5) with arched fronts(Figs 24: 15–17; 25: 1, 2). Two me dium-sizespec i mens on flakes are of in ter est: they are ir reg -


186 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 24. Se lected chipped artefacts. End-scrap ers


Fig. 25. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–6 – end-scrap ers, 7 – bec, 8–13 – burins

u lar in shape, with in verse re touch ex tend ing onto the side (Fig. 25: 3, 4). Flake end-scrap ers weremade from ob sid ian (9) and Boldogköva- ráljatype limnoquartzite (3), radiolarite (1), and opal(1).

More over, an end-scraper was made on asmall frag ment of a red radiolarite plaquette (Fig.25: 5) and an other spec i men was made on a re sid -ual ob sid ian core (Fig. 25: 6). One flake spec i men has a kind of bec made by in versely re touchednotch (Fig. 25: 7).

BurinsThe small num ber of spec i mens with burin

scars (8) and their atyp i cal char ac ter in di cates that burin tech nique was not sys tem at i cally used as atech nique of tool pro duc tion or as a spe cificmethod of core re duc tion. Most prob a bly burinscars ap peared ac ci den tally when flakes andblades were be ing used.

A spec i men made on an ob sid ian blade re -sem bles a di hed ral burin (Fig. 25: 8). In all like li -hood, which is in di cated by the an gle be tweenburin scars and the blank sur face, this is the re sultof im pact frac tures formed when tough ma te ri alswere be ing per fo rated. The in verse splin ter ing onthe left edge could be the ef fect of the pres sure ex -erted by the haft. Func tion ally this tool wasprobably a perforator.

A burin-on-a-snap made on a macrobladefrom Boldogkövarálja limnoquartzite is in alllikelihood the only tool in ten tion ally shaped as aburin (Fig. 25: 9). Three Corbiac burins (the burin blow is transversal, from the re touched edge) wasthe ef fect of pres sure on the re touched lat eraledge of a blade (Fig. 25: 10) or an ob sid ian flake(Fig. 25: 11). Three other spec i mens (of whichone was made on an ob sid ian flake) were prob a -bly an at tempt to shape cores on flake frag ments(transches d’éclat) (Fig. 25: 12, 13). Three burinspalls (two from red radiolarite and one fromBoldogkövarálja type limnoquartzite) were alsore corded (Fig. 8: 1, 2).

Trun ca tionsA to tal of 27 blade spec i mens with ob verse

lat eral re touch. In re spect of the shape of re -touched edges they can be di vided into the fol -low ing groups types:

1. Dis tal, transversal trun ca tions (11) made

on me dium size blades (Fig. 26: 3–7); only 2spec i mens are short ened (Fig. 26: 8, 9). More -over, three trun ca tions have lat eral re touch (Fig.26: 10); one spec i men of them has, ex cep tion ally,in verse re touch (Fig. 26: 11), and one has a kindof im pact frac ture in the dis tal part (Fig. 26: 12).

2. Straight, dis tal trun ca tions (7) made on me -dium-size blades (Fig. 26: 13–16). One spec i menis short ened (Fig. 26: 18) and a macroblade spec i -men has fine, lat eral re touch (Fig. 26: 17).

3. S-shaped trun ca tions (2) made on me -dium-size blades (Figs 26: 19; 27: 1).

Only one spec i men has a straight trun ca tionshaped in the prox i mal part by in verse re touch(Fig. 27: 2). There were two atyp i cal spec i mens:one was shaped by fine re touch, pres ent also onthe edges (Fig. 27: 3) and the other had re touch on a transversal break in the prox i mal part (Fig. 27:4). Only sev eral trun ca tions have traces of us ingas a sickle in sert (Fig. 27: 5).

One dou ble-trun ca tion was reg is tered withslightly oblique trun ca tions (Fig. 27: 6); pos si bly,an other spec i men might also be a dou ble trun ca -tion, al though typologically it re sem bles end-scraper com bined with trun ca tion (Fig. 27: 7).

Ob sid ian trun ca tions are most nu mer ous (13); they are fol lowed by spec i mens from Boldogkö-varálja type limnoquartzite (5), radiolarite (2),chal ce dony (1) and quartz ite (1).

Geo met ric micro liths and backed piecesTra pezes and their frag ments (25) are the

most fre quent in this group. A rect an gle and tworhombs were also re corded.

The fol low ing types of tra pezes could be dis -tin guished:

1. Tra pezes on macroblades (4) (Fig. 27: 8–10) that, ba si cally, could be as cribed to dou bletrun ca tions, but the met ri cal bound ary be tweenthe lat ter cat e gory and microlithic tra pezes is notsharp. One spec i men in this group had al ter natetrun ca tions (Fig. 27: 11). One spec i men was made from choc o late flint (Fig. 27: 8), the others fromobsidian.

2. Microlithic tra pezes (9) as a rule are fairlyshort, with the width only slightly larger than theheight (Fig. 27: 12–17); only two spec i mens aremore wide (Fig. 27: 18). One of the lon ger spec i -mens has a prox i mal trun ca tion with an im pactfrac ture on the ven tral side (Fig. 27: 19). There is,

188 M. Nowak et al.


Fig. 26. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1, 2 – burin spalls, 3–19 – trun ca tions

190 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 27. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–7 – trun ca tions, 8–22 – tra pezes

be sides, a small tra peze with two notches shapedby al ter nate re touch on the lon ger edge (Fig. 27:20). All these spec i mens are made from obsidian.

3. Frag ments of small tra pezes (11) are withone trun ca tion pre served: ei ther a dis tal (5) (Figs27: 21, 22; 28: 1–3) or a prox i mal trun ca tion (6)(Fig. 28: 4–9) have been pre served. One spec i men has im pact frac tures both in the dis tal part as wellas on the break in the prox i mal part (Fig. 28: 3).All the spec i mens are from obsidian.

In the group of geo met ric in serts are of spe -cial in ter est in clud ing an ob sid ian rect an gle withfine re touch on one side (Fig. 28: 10), a rhombwith three re touched sides (it re sem bles, in fact, atanged point – Fig. 28: 11) made from Boldogkö-varálja type limnoquartzite, and an ob sid ianrhomb with re touch on four sides (Fig. 28: 12).

Backed im ple ments are few and not very typ -i cal (5): a mesial frag ment of a backed piece witha re touched op po site side (Fig. 28: 13), twobacked pieces with a slightly arched blunted backand a finely re touched, straight, op po site edge(Fig. 28: 14, 15), a thick backed flake with finelyre touched op po site edge, par tially dam aged (Fig.28: 16), and an asym met ri cal, one-sided crestedblade with steep re touch on part of one edge: both– the crest and blunted back – forms an im ple ment re sem bling the angulated backed blade (Fig. 28:17). All the spec i mens were made from obsidian.

Per fo ra tors and becsThere were seven becs and atyp i cal per fo ra -

tors, all made from ob sid ian. Blade per fo ra tors (2) had slightly asym met ri cal points (Fig. 28: 18, 19). One spec i men had an im pact frac ture in the dis talpart. Al ter nate per fo ra tors (2) were also made onblades (Fig. 28: 20, 21).

An asym met ri cal bec was shaped by twoClac ton ian notches in the prox i mal part of a thickblade (Fig. 28: 22). An other bec was made on athin ther mal plaquette of Ondava hornstone (Fig.28: 23). The third spec i men was shaped on a cor -ti cal flake by two notches on the side op po site tothe large notch (Fig. 28: 24).

Re touched bladesRe touched blades are the most im por tant tool

group. In the an a lyzed se ries there were 257blades with lat eral re touch which ac counts for54.9% of re touched tools; 98.4% of re touched

blades were made from ob sid ian. Blades with bi -lat eral and with uni lat eral re touch can be dis tin -guished.

1. Blades with bi lat eral re touch – 123 spec i -mens. Among them the fol low ing spec i mens were reg is tered:

1.1. Spec i mens with con tin u ous, semi-steepre touch (50). In this group there were, both, fine,al most microlithic bladelets with straight edgesshaped by semisteep re touch (Fig. 29: 1, 2) andlarger blades, re sem bling clas si cal lames retou-chées (Fig. 29: 3–6). Most spec i men, how ever,are with in con spic u ous notches shaped by fine,semi-steep re touch which causes that lat eral edges are un du lat ing (Fig. 29: 7–9). In two cases fine,flat re touch on the ven tral side cov ers small sec -tions of the edge. A pos si bil ity that this re touch isthe ef fect of use can not be ex cluded (Fig. 29: 10,11). Five spec i mens have transversal re touch: dis -tal or on the break, sim ple (Fig. 29: 12, 13) orshaping a notch.

1.2. Blades with con tin u ous re touch on oneedge and par tial on the other (34). One edge hassim ple, semisteep re touch, whereas the other hasfine, notched re touch on its small sec tion; some -times the re touch is al ter nate semisteep andnotched (Fig. 29: 14). Blades with al ter nate re -touch are also pres ent: on one edge the re touch isven tral, fairly reg u lar, semisteep, on the op po siteedge the re touch is dor sal, dis con tin u ous, flat(Fig. 29: 15).

1.3. Blades with bi lat eral, dis con tin u ous re -touch (39). Spec i mens with notched re touch onboth edges (20) (Fig. 29: 16–18), and, some times, with asym met ri cal notches were dis tin guished.One spec i men is with prox i mal, in verse notch(Fig. 29: 16). Of in ter est is a stran gled piece on areg u lar blade. More over, there were: i) bladeswith bi lat eral, denticulated re touch (4), ii) bladeswith notched-denticulated re touch (4), iii) bladeswith denticulated-notched re touch on one edgeand sim ple re touch on the op po site edge (10), iv)blades with al ter nate retouch (1) (Fig. 29: 21).

2. Blades and bladelets with con tin u ous, uni -lat eral re touch (130):

2.1. Reg u lar blades with con tin u ous, semi-steep, sim ple re touch on one edge (48) (Fig. 29:19, 20).

2.2. Ro bust, ir reg u lar blades with notched ordenticulated-notched re touch (8) (Fig. 29: 22).


192 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 28. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–9 – tra pezes, 10 – rect an gle, 11, 12 – rhombes, 13–17 – backed pieces,18–21 – per fo ra tors, 22–24 – bec


Fig. 29. Se lected chipped artefacts. Re touched blades

194 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 30. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–5 – re touched blades, 6–12 – re touched flakes

One spec i men had fine, al ter nate re touch on theop po site edge.

2.3. Bladelets with uni lat eral microretouch(6). These are spec i mens with ex tremely fine re -touch, or with reg u lar, semisteep re touch. A spec -i men with a dis tinct im pact frac ture in the dis talpart could be used as an ar row head (Fig. 30: 1).

2.4. Blades with ex tremely fine, ir reg u lar,dis con tin u ous, ob verse re touch some times re -stricted to a dor sal notches (68) (Fig. 30: 2).

2.5. A spec i men with a dis tal, in verse notch(Fig. 30: 3) and a blade with a prox i mal in versenotch and re touch thin ning the base (Fig. 30: 4)and a spec i men with in verse prox i mal re touchshap ing a kind of a tang (Fig. 30: 5) also be long in this group.

Re touched flakesThe group of flakes num bered 65 spec i mens

rep re sents the fol low ing types:1. Flakes with uni lat eral re touch (28). As a

rule, the re touch is very fine, less of ten semisteep,ob verse (Fig. 30: 6, 7). Oc ca sion ally, the re touchis thicker, semisteep shap ing lat eral notches.

2. Flakes with bi lat eral re touch (16). Most of -ten the re touch is con tin u ous on one edge,whereas on the op po site edge it cov ers only smallsec tions; some times, on one edge the re touch isnotched or al ter nate notched (Fig. 30: 8–10). Aspec i men with bi lat eral, dor sal re touch (Fig. 30:11) was also recorded.

3. Flakes with uni lat eral re touch and re touchin the dis tal part (8). The re touch can be in verse,fine, semisteep (Fig. 30: 12), or on one edge it isfine, del i cate, while in dis tal part it is thick,semisteep, denticulated-notched (Fig. 31: 1).Flakes with very fine uni lat eral re touch, in thedis tal part, and par tially cov er ing the op po siteedge also occur.

4. Flakes with lat eral re touch and a notch inthe prox i mal part (2) (Fig. 31: 2).

5. Flakes with fine re touch round the en tirecir cum fer ence (2) or with semisteep re touch, re -sem bling raclettes (Fig. 31: 3, 4).

6. Flakes with re touch lim ited to the dis tal (6)or to the prox i mal part (2) (Fig. 31: 5).

Denticulated-notched toolsBe sides flakes and blades with par tial, denti-

culated-notched re touch there were 5 spec i mensthat can be in ter preted as def i nite tool types:

1. Three ob sid ian flake tools with transversaldis tal notches: in two cases the notches are ob -verse (Fig. 31: 6, 7), in one case the notch is Clac -ton ian, in verse (Fig. 31: 8).

2. An ob sid ian blade with a lat eral, fairlyshal low notch.

3. A denticulated tool made round the en tirecir cum fer ence of a discoidal core from Boldogkö- varálja type limnoquartzite (Fig. 31: 9).

Side-scrap ersA small side-scraper made on an un worked

chunk of Ondava hornstone was re corded (Fig.31: 10).

Pic type toolsThere were two ro bust pic made on ther mal

chunks (slilicified lime stone and Boldogkövarálja type limnoquartzite), with pointed tips shaped byal ter nate re touch (Fig. 31: 11) or by two, al ter nateClac ton ian notches (Fig. 31: 12).

Sickle in sertsAmong lithic artefacts from Moravany sickle

in serts are not nu mer ous. Be sides the sev eral re -touched trun ca tions with sil ica gloss, men tionedear lier, and spo radic tools with sil ica gloss trans -formed by sec ond ary re touch, there were only two unretouched blades used as sickle in serts, moun-ted obliquely in the hafts (Fig. 31: 13, 14). Allthese spec i mens were made from limnoquartzite.The small pro por tion of artefacts with sickle gloss has been caused by the fact that func tions of ob -sid ian artefacts – pre dom i nat ing in the col lec tionfrom Moravany – have not been iden ti fied bymac ro scopic iden ti fi ca tion of use-wears.

Scat ter-pat tern of lithic artefactsIn the in ves ti gated part of the site at Mora-

vany the traces of chipped stone pro duc tion werecon cen trated in two fea tures: 1/98 and 2/99,where a to tal of 3627 artefacts were un cov eredform ing 82.7% of the an a lyzed in ven tory. Boththe num ber of artefacts as well as the struc ture ofthe two as sem blages is very sim i lar. The fea turesare re mains of work shops next to dwell ings where both debitage prod ucts and re touched tools con -cen trated. The ba sic raw ma te rial in the two fea -tures was ob sid ian, al though other rocks also oc -cur (in fea ture 2/99 as many as 14 tools were


196 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 31. Se lected chipped artefacts. 1–5 – re touched flakes, 6–8 – notched flakes, 9 – denticulated tool, 10 –side-scraper, 11, 12 – pic, 13, 14 – sickle in serts

made from white-yel low limnoquartzite, and infea ture 1/98 13 blades from Ondava hornstonewere re corded).

We sup pose that the or ga ni za tion of lithicpro duc tion was not based on spe cial iza tion: in the dwell ings or in front of houses (as sum ing that thefea tures 1/98 and 2/99 were clay-pits next tohouses) ob sid ian blanks and tools, in full cy cle,were pro duced. The mem bers of the com mu nityin hab it ing the overground dwell ings par tic i patedin the pro duc tion pro cess; the houses were as so ci -ated with pits where waste from debitage as wellas worn tools were dis carded. The con tents of thepits doc u ment a va ri ety of ac tiv i ties. The pres -ence, in both pits, of cores and blanks pro ducedby means of ad vanced punch or even pres suretech nique is puz zling. Their pres ence sug geststhat some knappers, par tic i pat ing in the pro duc -tion, were highly skilled. Two pos si bil i ties can becon sid ered: ei ther the pres ence of cores workedby pres sure tech nique was re lated to ep i sodeswhen spe cial ized knappers lived in the set tle mentas per ma nent com mu nity mem bers, just like insome set tle ments of the Bal kan FTN, or itin er antcrafts men vis ited the set tle ment (such a model isalso con sid ered in the case of macroblade in dus -tries of the Bal kan FTN). How ever, the bulk ofartefacts was pro duced to meet the needs of par -tic u lar household clusters and by the communitymembers who also performed other tasks andactivities.

Dis cus sionThe ba sic raw ma te rial uti lized in chipped in -

dus try re corded at Moravany was ob sid ian, like in other sites of the early AVK in East ern SlovakianLow land (Ta ble 1). Its con tri bu tion ranges from88.9% at Moravany to 97.6% at ZemplínskeKopèany. In gen eral, it is slightly higher in siteswhich are lo cated closer to de pos its. Nearby de -pos its of ob sid ian (Carpathian I) are sit u ated inthe area of Vinièky, Malá Bara, and Streda nadBodrogom (Kaminská and Duda, 1985), which isat a dis tance of 30 (Slavkovce, Zemplínske Kop-èany) to 45 km (Moravany, Zbudza, Zalužice). Itseems that the in hab it ants of each of these set tle -ments con ducted ex pe di tions to ob tain the rawma te rial. On the other hand, sim i lar share of ob -sid ian in var i ous sites and the pres ence of roughnod ules point to the lack of the cen ters of sec ond -

ary dis tri bu tion. Per haps the first groups set tlingdown the ter ri to ries north of the Ondava rivermouth ar rived into new ar eas with a sup ply of raw ma te rial, as ev i denced in the cache found at Slav-kovce (Kaczanowska and Koz³owski, 1997). Itcon sists of 34 ob sid ian nod ules and weighs a to talof over 13 kg.

Other raw ma te ri als found in the early Neo -lithic in ven to ries from East ern Slovakian Low -land come from more dis tant out crops. Pos si bly itre flects some con tacts with groups who lived inmore dis tant re gions. As re gards Moravany,Zabudza, and Zalužice limnoquartzites rank be -hind ob sid ian. Its de pos its are most prob a bly lo -cated in north-east ern Hun gary. The oc cur renceof small quan ti ties of radiolarites, prob a bly orig i -nat ing from Klippen Belt stretch ing along theCarpathians, sug gests the con tacts with ar eas ly -ing north of the area un der con sid er ation. Theshare of radiolarites de creases with in creas ingdis tance from these de pos its. It amounts to 2.8%at Moravany whereas only in di vid ual spec i menswere iden ti fied at Slavkovce. In the as sem blagesfrom Moravany, Zbudza and Zalužice (in the lat -ter site both in ear lier stage and in youn ger one)sin gle spec i mens of Volhynia flint oc cur. Itshould be men tioned that this raw ma te rialreached cen tral parts of the Tisza ba sin during thedevelopment of the Körös-Cris (see the site ofEcsegfalva).

In com par i son with other early AVK sites inEast ern Slovakian Low land, in hab it ants of theset tle ment at Moravany used a much wider rangeof stone raw ma te ri als. Some were strictly of lo cal or i gin (e.g., Ondava flint ex tracted from al lu via of the Laborec river), oth ers came from dis tant ter ri -to ries (“choc o late” flint from the mid dle Vistulaba sin), oth ers are still of un known prov e nance.They all dem on strate the broad con tacts of theinhabitants of this village.

Ex ploi ta tion was based on sin gle plat formcore with very lim ited prep a ra tion (mainly ofstrik ing plat forms). Com par i son of the tech niques of lithic ex ploi ta tion at Moravany to other sites ofthe early AVK in di cates that the way of cor ingwas quite di verse. Sites lo cated in east ernSlovakia, such as Slavkovce and Zaluzice, si mul -ta neously with the dom i nance of sin gle-plat form,mostly subconical and cy lin dri cal cores, con tainthe dou ble-plat form cores, de signed spe cif i cally


for flakes, which do not oc cur at Zbudza(Kaczanowska and Kozlowski, 1997). In turn, onthe Hun gar ian sites in the mid-Tisza ba sin we ob -serve, in ad di tion to the dom i nant usu ally quitereg u lar sin gle-plat form cores, the pres ence ofcores with al tered ori en ta tion (Mezokövesd,Kotelek). Also, the east ern vari ant of tran si tionstage from the Körös-Cris cul ture to the AVK ischar ac ter ized by di verse mor phol ogy of cores(mainly sin gle-plat form); at Méhtelek they arepri mar ily spec i mens with flat flak ing platformwhile at Ibrány with narrow one (Starnini, 1993,1994, 2001).

The tech nique used for pro duc ing blanks atMoravany is sim i lar to that used in other sites.Blade blanks re corded in most of the sites of early AVK is char ac ter ized by the length of 2.5–4.5 cmwithin one mode be tween 3.0 and 4.0 cm, thussim i larly to the blades from Moravany. How ever,blade blanks of the length 5–6.3 cm were iden ti -fied at Zbudza and Zalužice. In the Hun gar iansites, for mer pa ram e ters are typ i cal for the east ern vari ant of “tran si tion”, from Ibrány as well as fornorth ern one, known from Kötelek. By con trast,in sites like Méhtelek and Mezokövesd there aretwo modes of the length of blades (2–4 and 6–8cm), and in other “tran si tional” as sem blage fromTiszaszolos we have even three modes (Dombo-róczki, 2009).

Mostly blade blanks were used to pro ducetools while end-scrap ers were pro duced de lib er -ately from both blades and flakes. As re gards tool

struc ture, lat er ally re touched blades pre dom i nateat Moravany (54%). Sec ond place is taken by re -touched flakes, fol lowed by micro liths (in clud ingbacked pieces – 33 spec i mens), end-scrap ers (29), and trun ca tions (27). Very sim i lar pat tern can befound in other early AVK sites in East ern Slova-kian Low land (Slavkovce, Zbudza, Zalužice, andZemplínske Kopèany – Ta ble 2). Such a model ofquan ti ta tive struc ture has evolved in Körös-Criscul ture and pre vailed also in AVK sites in north -ern Alföld (e.g. Füzesabony-Gúbakut – Ta ble 2).In the Košice Ba sin, a slightly higher share ofend-scrap ers was ob served in case of the siteÈeèejovce (Koz³owski, 1989). The model of as -sem blages with a pre dom i nance of lat er ally re -touched blades over other tools are still vis i ble insome sites of Bükk cul ture, e.g. at Humenné, lo -cated at the foot of the Vihorlat Mts. How ever, atsite Šarišské Micha¾any, which is sit u ated in Šariš Ba sin, group of tools is dom i nated by end-scrap -ers. Such a sit u a tion pos si bly mir rors spa tial dif -fer ences within flint industry of the Bükk culturecaused by the contacts with the LBK.

Thus, within chipped as sem blages of theearly AVK in East ern Slovakian Low land threeba sic types can be dis tin guished, with ref er ence to the fre quen cies of the mor pho log i cal groups:

– Type 1: blades with lat eral re touches > re -touched flakes > end-scrap ers > tra pezes andother micro liths. This type in cludes Moravany,the youn ger phase of Zalužice, and ZempllínskeKopèany.

198 M. Nowak et al.

Ta ble 1Raw ma te rial struc ture of chipped in dus try in Moravany com pared to other AVK as sem blages

in East ern Slovakian Low land

Raw ma te rialMoravany Slavkovce Zbudza

Zalužice, youn gerphase

ZemplínskeKopèany

N % N % N % N % N %

Ob sid ian 3898 88.9 204 96.2 887 90.7 385 91.0 323 97.6

Limnoquartzites 148 3.4 65 6.7 27 6.4 1 0.l3

Radiolarities 124 2.8 6 0.6 3 0.7

Ondava hornstone 71 1.6 2 0.6

'Choc o late' flint(Mid dle Po land)

1 0.02

'Volhynian' flint 1 0.02 2 0.2 2 0.4

Oth ers 143 3.3 8 3.8 18 1.8 6 1.4 5 1.5

– Type 2: re touched flakes > re touchedblades > end-scrap ers > tra pezes and other micro -liths. This type oc curs at Slavkovce.

– Type 3: re touched blades > end-scrap ers >re touched flakes > tra pezes and other micro liths.In ven to ries of this type oc cur at Zbudza and at anear lier phase of Zalužice.

Dif fer ences be tween the as sem blages did notarise from the prop er ties of raw ma te ri als used,be cause they are all based on the ob sid ian. In allthese sites a full pro duc tion cy cle took place andthe artefacts pro duced off-site con sti tute only asmall por tion. In the first study of in ven to riesfrom East ern Slovakian Low land (Kaczanowskaand Koz³owski, 1997) a dif fer ence be tween theas sem blage from Slavkovce (which was clas si fied here as Type 2), and re main ing ones were in ter -preted in terms of a dif fer ent chro nol ogy. This hy -poth e sis is still valid and sup ported by the highpro por tion of re touched flakes in a tran si tional,Körös/Lin ear site at Ibrány. How ever, on theother hand, the fre quency of re touched flakes atMéhtelek is low. Dif fer ences among tool kits canbe as so ci ated not only with sty lis tic seriation, butalso with the spe cific sub sis tence activities con-duct ed by the inhabitants of each settlement.

ARCHAEOBOTANY

From the Moravany site two groups of plantre mains were found: 1) seeds, fruits, and veg e ta -tion part of plants, and 2) frag ments of wood char -coal (Lityñska-Zaj¹c et al., 2008). This ma te rialco mes from three kinds of sam ples: soil sam ples,burnt clay and char coal pieces that were man u ally re cov ered in their con cen tra tion places. In to tal,128 soil sam ples (wa ter sieved with mesh sizes of0.2 and 0.5 mm and flotated with mesh sizes of0.5 and 1 mm), 140 char coal sam ples, and 141sam ples of burnt clay were an a lyzed.

Seeds and fruits of cul ti vated and wild plantsAll plant ma te rial (charred diaspores and im -

pres sions on burnt clay) was iden ti fied by meansof com par a tive col lec tion and spe cial ist lit er a ture. Ex am i na tions were car ried out with 10–40 mag ni -fi ca tion (Lityñska-Zaj¹c et. al, 2008).

Most of the clas si fied plants re mains rep re -sent ce re als spe cies. This was de ter mined on thebase of charred ma te rial (cary op sis and basalparts of glumes) and im prints on burnt clay. Daubpieces con tained im pres sions of grains and veg e -ta tive plant parts (frag ments of spikelet, “spikelet


Ta ble 2Per cent ages of the ma jor tool groups in Moravany com pared to other early AVK sites

Tool group Moravany Slavkovce ZbudzaZalužice,

older phase

Zalužice,youn gerphase

ZemplínskeKopèany

Füzesabony,older fea ture

End-scrap ers 6.2 13 20.8 19.3 7.4 12.3 10.7

Burins 1.7 3.7 10.4 2.4 6.1

Trun ca tions 5.7 9.3 7.8 8.7 6.1 11.1 10.7

Backed im ple ments 1.1 5.6 1.7

Becs 1.4 6.1 2.5

Micro liths 5.9 13 6.7 1.7 7.4 3.6

Re touched blades 54.9 16.7 31.2 45.6 54.3 43.2 67.8

Re touched flakes 13.9 31.5 17.2 19.3 16.1 7.4 7.2

Denticulated-notched tools 1.1 12.3

Side-scrap ers 0.2 1.7

Pics 0.4

Unretouched sickle in serts 0.8

Oth ers 7.4 5.0 3.7

Frag ments 6.4 1.7

To tal (N) 468 54 192 69 86 81

forks”, as well as basal parts of glumes and chaff), some of them hav ing charred and/or drayed spec i -mens pre served in side. Hulled wheats: emmerTriticum dicoccon Schrank. and einkorn Triticummocococcum L. were dom i nant among the iden ti -fied ce re als and most of the ce re als be longed toemmer (Ta ble 3). Also, com mon bar ley Hordeumvulgare re corded as im prints of a few cary op sisand spikelet frag ments were doc u mented. How -ever, the big gest num ber of spec i mens rep re sentsone or both of the two men tioned wheat spe ciesTriticum dicoccon vel T. mocococcum. A part ofpoorly pre served ma te rial was de scribed as un -iden ti fied ce re als Cerealia indet. or as un iden ti -fied ce re als and/or wild grasses Cerealia indet.vel Poaceae indet.

A small num ber of wild her ba ceous plant re -mains were found both in the soils sam ples and inthe burnt clay (Ta ble 4). On the ba sis of charredseeds three spe cies: Chenopodium al bum L.,Saponaria officinalis L. and cf. Solanum nigrumL. were de ter mined. Sev eral grains were iden ti -fied to the level of ge nus brome-grass Bromus sp.A part of the ma te rial pre served on daub (un -charred chaff frag ments) and charred four grainsand two very dam aged seeds were clas si fied onlyto the grass Poaceae indet. and le gume Fabaceaeindet. fam i lies. Seeds and fruit of Chenopodiumal bum L., Stellaria gramineae L., Fallopia con -vol vu lus (L.) Á. Löve, Polygonum aviculare L.,

Scleranthus annuus L. vel S. perennis L., Vi olasp. and Caryophyllaceae were pre served in un -charred con di tions. These spec i mens may rep re -sent an ad mix ture from the mod ern time, as a re -sult of con tam i na tion dur ing the han dling of thesam ples in the field or an accumulation of plantremains caused by animals.

Three of afore men tioned taxa may cor re -spond to hab i tats of anthropogenic or i gin. Bromusspe cies be long to a ge nus whose spe cies are re -lated to ce real cul ti va tion (e.g. B. secalinus L., B.arvensis L.), ruderal hab i tat (B. sterilis L., B.tectorum L.) and meadow hab i tat (B. hordaceousL.). Un for tu nately, due to the de gree of de ter mi -na tion to the ge nus level of such ma te rial, it is im -pos si ble to assess these findings.

Chenopodium al bum is re corded most of tenand most abun dantly in subfossil ma te ri als (Wa-sylikowa, 1983), likely be cause of their en hancedseeds pro duc tions (over 100000 seeds per year –Tymrakiewicz, 1962; Domañska, 1982). At pres -ent white pigweed is as so ci ated pri mar ily withruderal hab i tats. Quite of ten it also oc curs in var i -ous sow ing, es pe cially in crops of gar den veg e ta -bles and root crops. It ap pears also in the fields ofce re als. It is char ac ter ized by wide eco log i cal am -pli tude, but grown better on rich soils.

Black night shade Solanum nigrum is an an -nual herb, also oc cur ring in ruderal hab i tats andcan be re lated to ce real cul ti va tion. Solanum

200 M. Nowak et al.

Ta ble 3Num ber of de ter mined re mains of ce re als from Moravany

Name of taxa Kind of remainsDaub Soil samples

Totalimprint charred dryed charred

Triticum dicoccon

caryopsis 12 4 16

glume 1 1 2

spikelet 5 1 7 13

T. monococcumcary op sis 2 1 3

spikelet 1 1

T. dicoccon vel T.monococcum

cary op sis 27 2 29

glume 16 4 76 1 97

spikelet 10 7 17

Hordeum vulgarespikelet 3

cary op sis 4

Cerealia indet.chaff +

cary op sis 1 2

Cerealia indet. velPoaceae indet

chaff 0 +

nigrum is grow ing in fer tile, neu tral or al ka lineand con tain ing cal cium car bon ate soils and wetsoils (Tymrakiewicz, 1962).

Soapwort Saponaria officinalis rep re sentshab i tats lo cated in the river sides or other per ma -nently wet sites. They fre quently co ex ist with wil -low com mu ni ties. It is very in ter est ing taxa be -cause was known and ap plied in folk med i cine(Podbielkowski, 1985). Ac tive sub stances in clude sapo nins, oc cur ring in the whole herb, but espe-cially in the root.

In Moravany hulled wheats pre dom i natedamong the ce re als. Most of the re mains be longedto emmer Triticum dicoccon, ac com pa nied by less rep re sent re mains of einkorn T. monococcum.Com pared to wheats, bar ley Hordeum vulgarewas less abun dant. Plant ma te rial in di cates thathulled wheat play an im por tant role in ag ri cul tural sys tem of the early Neolithic settlers.

The same ce re als ap peared in two other sitesfrom early AVK in East ern Slovakian Low land:Slavkovce and Zalužice (Lityñska-Zaj¹c, 1997;Lityñska-Zaj¹c et al., 2008: 89). Tak ing into ac -count fore go ing tax o nomic com po si tions (Ta ble5) as well as early Neo lithic struc tures of cul ti -vated plants re corded in ad ja cent re gions (Berzsé- nyi and Dálnoki, 2005; Gyulai, 2007; Hajnalová,1993: 104–108; Hajnalová, 2007; Wasylikowa etal., 1991), it seems prob a ble that wheat was theprin ci ple ce real cul ti vated by early AVK peo ple

in the area un der dis cus sion. Both wheat spe cieswere prob a bly cul ti vated in the same fields in amix ture as they have sim i lar edaphic re quire ments and sim i lar life cy cles (Hajnalová, 2007: 306;Januševiè, 1976; Jones and Halstead, 1995;Kreuz, 2007: 273–274). Bar ley had mi nor, if anyim por tance since its re mains are very scarce inmany early Neo lithic con texts in Cen tral Eu ropeand it is com monly con sid ered as a weed grown in wheat fields (Kreuz et al., 2005).

In the stud ied sam ples from Moravany therewere small num ber of wild her ba ceous plant re -mains. There fore, any re con struc tion of for merplant com mu ni ties can not be made. Nev er the less,it can be shown that ex cept of Saponaria offici-nalis all those taxa could have been re lated toanthropogenic and ruderal hab i tats, such as cul ti -va tion. Pres ence of S. officinalis, which oc curs inwet hab i tats, in di cates that this spe cies was pur -posely car ried into the set tle ment, prob a bly fromŠarkan or Ondava val ley. This plant is a cu ra tiveand poi son ous one, and its roots were also usedfor cleansing.

In con clu sion, we would like to re peat the al -ready ex pressed opin ion (Lityñska-Zaj¹c et al.,2008) that a rel a tively small num ber of ce re alsand weeds do not prove the low par tic i pa tion ofdo mes ti cated plants in hu man di ets. First, there isno in di ca tion for the pre dom i nance of ‘wild’ foodin the diet of Moravany in hab it ants. Sec ond,


Ta ble 4Num ber of de ter mined re mains of wild her ba ceous plant from Moravany

Taxa name State of pres er va tion Kind of re mains Num ber of spec i mens

Bromus sp. charred grain 1, 2*

Chenopodium al bum charred seed 15

Saponaria officinalis charred seed 17

cf. Solanum nigrum charred seed 1

Fabaceae indet. charred seed 2

Poacea indet.charred grain 4

uncharred chaff 2*

Stellaria graminea un charred seed 2

Chenopodium al bum un charred seed 1

Fallopia con vol vu lus un charred fruit 2

Polygonum aviculare un charred fruit 1

Scleranthuus annuus vel S. perennis un charred fruit 1

Vi ola sp. un charred fruit 1

Caryophyllaceae indet. un charred seed 3

* – charred re mains pre served in side the im print

palaeoeconomic data (and their in ter pre ta tions)from the Tisza Ba sin sug gest that the agro-pas to -ral mode of sub sis tence was im por tant for theFirst Neo lithic so ci et ies (Bartosiewicz, 2005;Bogaard, 2004a; Craig et al., 2005). Re con struc -tions of the Ho lo cene his tory of the Šarkan val leydem on strate that the ac tiv ity of the first farm ersdid not sig nif i cantly trans form the lo cal en vi ron -ment (and this is a typ i cal sit u a tion in theCarpathian Ba sin and the Bal kans, not only dur -ing the early Neo lithic). Con se quently, we are ofthe opin ion that the spa tial ex tent of the ce realfarm ing was rather small; i. e. emmer and einkornwere cul ti vated to gether on small fields lo catednear the vil lage houses. Hy po thet i cally, such a sit -u a tion would im ply an in ten sive mode of ce realhus bandry (Bogaard, 2002, 2004a, 2004b). How -ever, the set of ac quired plant re mains, es pe ciallyweeds, is too mod est to eval u ate hy poth e sis of thekind. It should be also re mem bered that un der -stand ing the term “in ten sive cul ti va tion” withinNeo lithic con texts and the ques tion of its at trib -utes is still ambiguous (e. g. Kreuz et al., 2005:249, 251).

Wood char coal frag mentsIn the iden ti fi ca tion of char coal each frag -

ment is the unit of. It was usu ally bro ken man u -ally along the three an a tom i cal sec tions: trans -

verse, lon gi tu di nal tan gen tial and lon gi tu di nalra dial. Then each frag ment was ob served us ing are flected light mi cro scope with light and darkfields. De tailed in for ma tion and mi cro graphswere sup ported by Scan ning Elec tron Mi cro scope (Fig. 32). Iden ti fi ca tions were made in com par i -son with an a tom i cal at lases (Jacquiot et al., 1973;Schweingruber, 1990) and spec i mens com ingfrom a mod ern ref er ence col lec tion. Most of thetaxa are clas si fied to ge nus level and the iden ti fi -ca tion of spe cies is given on the ba sis of its unique pres ence in the lo cal veg e ta tion. The an a tom i calchar ac ter is tics do not per mit to dis tin guish be -tween Carpinus betulus and C. orientalis(Schweingruber, 1990); nev er the less, the mod erndis tri bu tion of both spe cies may sug gest that thecharcoals might rep re sent C. betulus (Tutin et al.,1964–1993).

Among 2784 char coal frag ments 15 taxawere iden ti fied to subfamily, ge nus or spe cieslevel (Ta ble 6; Fig. 32). These char coal frag ments were found dis persed in ar chae o log i cal fea tures,in the con text that rep re sent the dump ing or leav -ing rub bish area. They re flect the re mains of dif -fer ent wood burn ing ac tiv i ties but mainly cor re -spond to do mes tic fuel wood de pos ited within along-term span. Sim i lar char coal as sem blage usu -ally pro vides high di ver sity of taxa and thus mayform a spe cific sam ple of lo cal woody veg e ta tion.

202 M. Nowak et al.

Ta ble 5Re mains of ce re als from Moravany com pared to other early Neo lithic sites

in East ern Slovakian Low land

Taxe name RemainsSites

Moravany Slavkovce Zaluzice

Triticum dicoccon

caryopsis 12

glume 2

spikelet 13

T. monococcumcary op sis 3 2

spikelet 1 1

T. dicoccon vel T. monococcum

cary op sis 29 1

glume 97 1

spikelet 17

Hordeum vulgarespikelet 3

cary op sis 4 2

Cerealia indet. chaff + + +

Cerealia indet. vel Poaceae indet. chaff + + +

To sum up, the charcoals com ing from that kindof ar chae o log i cal con text may serve for the re con -struc tion of an cient plant com mu ni ties (Chabal,1988, 1997; Badal Gar cia, 1992; Heinz andThiÀbault, 1998; Ntinou, 2002; Carrión Marco,

2005; Lityñska-Zaj¹c and Wasylikowa, 2005).How ever, not all of the taxa are taken into

con sid er ation as rep re sen ta tive for Neo lithicwoody flora since some of them rep re sent con -tam i nated ma te rial (Ta ble 4). The afore men tioned


Fig. 32. SEM mi cro graphs of se lected charcoals from Moravany. 1 – Quercus sp. de cid u ous – trans verse sec tion(T.S.), bar = 100 µm, 2 – Fraxinus ex cel sior – T.S., bar = 250 µm, 3 – Ulmus sp. – T.S., fun gal hyphae in side ofplant tis sue, bar = 100 µm, 4 – Rosaceae/Maloideae – T.S., bar = 100 µm, 5 – Rosaceae/Maloideae – lon gi tu di naltan gen tial sec tion (L.T.S.), bar = 50 µm, 6 – Corylus avellana – T.S., bar = 100 µm, 7 – Corylus avellana – lon gi tu -di nal ra dial sec tion (L.R.S), bar = 10 µm, 8 – Salix sp./Populus sp. – T.S., bar = 50 µm, 9 – Salix sp./Populus sp. –L.T.S., bar = 50 µm

as sump tion is based on three ra dio car bon datingsand strati graphic ob ser va tions (Lityñska-Zaj¹c etal., 2008; Moskal-del Hoyo and Koz³owski,2009). First, two taxa (Fagus sylvatica and Carpi- nus betulus) that rep re sent the most re cent floracon cern ing the Ho lo cene mi gra tion of trees in Eu -rope (Ralska-Jasiewiczowa et al., 2004) weredated in or der to con firm their early pres ence in

lo cal veg e ta tion. The re sults of AMS ra dio car bondatings gave much youn ger age for both trees:3,285±30 BP for F. sylvatica (Poz- 22308) and1,060±30 BP for C. betulus (Poz- 22309). As acon se quence, all char coal frag ments be long ing tothese taxa were ex cluded from Neo lithic as sem -blages due to mod ern con tam i na tion (postdeposi-tional fac tors). Sec ond, some char coal frag ments

204 M. Nowak et al.

Ta ble 6Re sults of anthracological anal y sis from Moravany. Ab so lute num ber of char coal frag ments

and rel a tive fre quency of the sum (%). Mod i fied af ter Lityñska-Zaj¹c et al., 2008, ta ble 3

Moravany Ar chae o log i cal features

Wood taxa 2/99B 2/00 3/00 1 /01 2/01 3/01 7/01 10/01 1/01 2/01 3/01 1/06 2/06 3/06 2/07 3/07 S %

NEO LITHIC

Corylus avellana 7 7 0.25

Frangula alnus 2 2 0.07

Fraxinus ex cel -sior

2 279 130 2 425 1 11 8 1 859 30.85

Pinus sylvestris 1 1 0.04

Acer sp. 4 8 8 1 21 0.75

Alnus sp. 4 1 5 0.18

Betula sp. 1 2 5 8 0.29

Quercus sp. de -cid u ous

4 102 313 12 167 11 9 8 374 21 6 18 5 1050 37.71

Salix sp./Populus sp.

4 4 0.14

Sambucus sp. 20 3 1 24 0.86

Ulmus sp. 41 1 24 66 78 6 18 234 8.40

cf. Ulmus sp. 2 2 0.07

Corylaceae 3 3 0.11

Rosaceae/Maloideae

3 9 12 0.43

Co nif er ous woodindet.

1 2 1 3 0.11

De cid u ous woodindet.

68 94 5 10 23 112 8 5 1 326 11.71

In de ter min able 2 12 4 45 41 41 1 6 1 153 5.49

CON TAM I NATED

Carpinus sp. cf.C. betulus

4 4 0.14

Fagus sylvatica 1 17 10 1 29 1.04

cf. F. sylvatica 3 1 4 0.14

Pinus sylvestris 7 7 0.25

Betula sp. 8 8 0.29

Picea sp./Larix sp.

1 2 3 0.11

Co nif er ous woodindet.

16 16 0.57

TO TAL S 34 41 18 5 523 676 58 198 41 9 8 1054 36 27 34 24 2784 100

Re cov ery method applied

Man u ally re cov ered sam ples (140)Wa ter sieved sam -

ples (20 × 20 l.)Flo ta tion sam ples (108 × 10 l.)

that are found in the bot tom of ar chae o log i cal fea -tures pres ent a group of dif fer ent taxa com po si -tion, mainly cor re spond ing to co nif er ous woodand birch rep re sent ing de cid u ous ones. Amongthem, the most in ter est ing was a taxon iden ti fiedas Picea sp. or Larix sp., two trees that do notgrow at pres ent in the vi cin ity of the site based ontheir eco log i cal re quire ments (Miklós, 2002). The AMS dat ing of one char coal piece in di cated itspro veni ence from Interpleniglacial (26,950±230BP; Poz-22307). There fore, all char coal frag -ments of Picea sp. or Larix sp. are also con sid ered as con tam i na tion due to depositional fac tors.More over, for fur ther in ter pre ta tion of the Neo -lithic char coal as sem blage, all the other taxa thatcame from the same con text (bot tom of the pits)and belong to typical trees for the Pleis- tocene ofSlovakia (Hajnalová and Krippel, 1984) mostprobably cannot be taken into account.

Among Neo lithic charcoals, the dom i nanceof oak (Quercus sp.), ash (Fraxinus ex cel sior) and elm (Ulmus sp.) is out stand ing. The other taxawere rep re sented by sin gle spec i mens. Pre vail ingtaxa at Moravany were prob a bly most abun dant in the site’s prox im ity be cause the most fre quent cat -e go ries are found eas ier in the anthracologicalsam ples (Ntinou, 2002). The dom i nance of oakmay sug gest the pres ence of de cid u ous oak for estwhich could have pre dom i nated in rich soils pres -ent in neigh bor ing area. In oak wood land, dif fer -ent oak spe cies ac com pa nied by ha zel as a pre -dom i nant shrub layer com po nent could haveap peared. Also, di verse spe cies be longed to Rosa- ceae fam ily could have oc curred as un der growthor in the for est edge. Ubiquities and light-de -mand ing spe cies of birch could have also ap -peared within this for ma tion. Elm, ash and ma plespe cies mostly could have oc curred in wet andshady zones with per ma nent good wa ter sup ply(Polunin and Walters, 1985; Ellenberg, 1988).Due to less com pet i tive abil ity within de cid u ouswood lands, Scots pine might probably haveoccupied some extrazonal and azonal habitats(Kreuz, 2008).

On the other hand, high fre quency of ash andelm in di cate that also riverine for est was pres entin the vi cin ity. The lat ter may cor re spond tomixed wood de vel oped on rich soils in the areachar ac ter ized by oc ca sional flood ing. Ash(Fraxinus ex cel sior) and elms (Ulmus mi nor, U.

Laevis) dom i nate in tree layer, ha bit u ally ac com -pa nied by oak that is mainly rep re sented bypedunculate oak (Quercus robur). In this plantcom mu nity also field ma ple (Acer campestre) iscom mon, whereas in shrub layer ha zel (Corylusavellana) and haw thorn (Crataegus monogyna)be long ing to Rosaceae fam ily are wide spread(Polunin and Walters, 1985: 90–91). More over,other taxa doc u mented in charcoals such as el der(Sambucus sp.) and al der buckthorn (Frangulaalnus) may rep re sent wet wood lands. Be sides, al -der (Alnus sp.) and wil low or pop lar (Salix sp./Populus sp.) that pre fer the hab i tats along the val -leys of rivers and streams might formed riverinefor est. All these plant com mu ni ties might havegrown in the proximity of Šarkan and Ondavariver.

The de for es ta tion of great scale did not oc curin the At lan tic pe riod (see above) in the vi cin ity of a Neo lithic site. Fur ther more, the list of tree taxamay im ply rather bro ken can opy of lo cal for ests.This as sump tion might be based on the pres enceof taxa that usu ally do not re gen er ate well inclosed for est such as oak, ash and ha zel (Kreuz,2008). The ex is tence of wet wood lands on richsoils in the vi cin ity of Neo lithic set tle ment seemsto in di cate good en vi ron men tal con di tion for sub -sis tence strat e gies: prox im ity of the river, landssuit able for cul ti va tion and rich in tree spe ciesfor ests with de vel oped un der growth that pro videwood, fuel, fod der, food sup ply (nuts, acorns andfruits), appropriate grazing area, etc.

The re gion of East ern Slovakian Low landdoes not of fer other palaeobotanical data from the At lan tic pe riod (Rybníèková and Rybníèek,1996). Nev er the less, the de vel op ment of mixedde cid u ous for ests dom i nated by oaks was alsodoc u mented in south-west ern Slovakia and north- east ern Hun gary (Krippel, 1971; Wil lis et al.,1995; Gardner, 2002; Hajnalová and Hajnalová,2005).

Fi nally, the Moravany as sem blage pro videssome palaeoethnographic in for ma tion. First, itcan be dem on strated that oak wood was used ascon struc tion ma te rial since it was found in situ inthe form of burnt frag ments of a post (2/03) andalso was doc u mented in the burnt clay (pit 1/01).An other un de ter mined wood frag ment was foundin the pit 3/01. Fur ther more, in one sam ple fromthe fea ture 1/01 an im print of leaf be long ing prob -


a bly to al der (cf. Alnus sp.) was also de tected(Lityñska-Zaj¹c et al., 2008). Sec ond, dif fer entkinds of wood were uti lized as fire wood andthere fore the ease of wood col lec tion and itstrans por ta tion may be a ma jor fac tor in its se lec -tion. In this re spect, dry wood re cov ered from for -est may be a very suit able source for fuel wood(Asouti, 2005; Asouti and Aus tin, 2005; Moskal-del Hoyo et al., 2010; Salis bury and Jane, 1940;Shackle ton and Prins, 1992; Thèry-Parisot,2001). In deed, some char coal frag ments fromMoravany in deed pres ent fun gal hyphae (Fig ure32: 3) that may re flect pre-burn ing mi cro bial ac -tiv ity. Hence, this may con firm the re cov ery ofdead and eas ily col lect able wood (Asouti, 2005;Moskal-del Hoyo et al., 2010; ThÀry-Parisot,2001).

RA DIO CAR BON CHRO NOL OGY

We ob tained 36 14C dates from within the ex -ca vated units (Ta ble 7). Twenty four of them were of charcoals (of which 22 from anthropogenicfea tures), and 12 from or ganic tem per of Neo -lithic pot tery (Koz³owski et al., 2003; Kalicki etal., 2004; 2005). Six of the dates were clearly be -yond the gen eral time frame of the Neo lithic innorth-east ern part of the Carpathian Ba sin. Theseolder dates are: Poz-22307, Ki-9250, Ki-9246,and Ki-9248 as well as youn ger ones: Poz-22308,and Poz-22309. There fore, they have not been in -cluded into the sum of cal i bra tion sim u la tions,how ever they are ob vi ously rel e vant to the cred i -

bil ity of the ob tained dat ing. The sim ple sum of29 dates (with out afore men tioned six dates anddate Ki-9251, ob tained from out side anthropo-genic con text) pro vides the range of 5,990–4,610cal. BC for 2s prob a bil ity and of 5,610–5,050 cal. BC for 1s prob a bil ity (µ = 5,280±340 cal. BC i.e.5,620–4,940 cal. BC) (Fig. 33).

The sum of the prob a bil i ties sim u lated sep a -rately only for “Neo lithic” dates ob tained fromcharcoals of anthropogenic ob jects (Fig. 34) gavethe fol low ing re sults: 2s prob a bil ity – 5,990–4,720 cal. BC, 1s prob a bil ity – 5,620–5,060 cal.BC, µ = 5,390±280 cal. BC i.e. 5,670–5,110 cal.BC. A sim i lar pro ce dure for the dates ob tainedonly from pot tery (Fig. 35) gave, in turn, the fol -low ing re sults: 2s prob a bil ity – 5,630–4,590 and4,370–4,070 cal. BC, 1s prob a bil ity – 5,550–5,000 cal. BC, µ = 5,120±360 cal. BC i.e. 5,480–4,760 cal. BC.

The broader ranges are dif fi cult to ac knowl -edge, both in ref er ence to the be gin ning and endof the early Neo lithic in East ern Slovakian Low -land, when com pared with datings of the firstNeo lithic in north-east ern part of the CarpathianBa sin (Biagi and Spataro, 2005; Biagi et al.,2005; Domboróczky, 2009; Horváth and Herte-lendi, 1994; Hertelendi et al., 1995; Koz³owskiand Nowak, 2007; Whit tle et al., 2002). Theysug gest a date too early for Moravany. It meansthat dates around 6,000/5,900 cal. BC would have been even ear lier than the be gin ning of theKörös-Cris cul ture in the Great Hun gar ian Plain.On the other hand its dis ap pear ance seems also to

206 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 33. Sum of prob a bil i ties of “Neo lithic” ra dio car -bon datings from anthropogenic fea tures

Fig. 34. Sum of prob a bil i ties of “Neo lithic” ra dio car -bon datings from anthropogenic fea tures ob tained oncharcoals

be too late. For this rea son, the ranges set by thesin gle stan dard de vi a tion, as well as by the av er -age val ues and ac com pa ny ing stan dard de vi a tions seem to be more close to pre his toric re al ity. Insuch a case we should pin point the be gin ning ofthe set tle ment around 5,600 cal. BC. We notehere, how ever, a dif fer ence be tween the datesfrom charcoals and pot tery. The for mer in di catesthe be gin ning at ca. 5,620 and 5,670 cal. BC,while the lat ter at ca. 5,550 and 5,480 cal. BC. Inour opin ion the date of 5,600 cal. BC or evenolder seems to be still too early, again when com -pared with the dates from neigh bour ing re gions as men tioned above, the pot tery styl ist ics, and char -ac ter is tics of lithic in dus try. As a re sult, the datede ter mined by the pot tery seems to be more likelyand thus the be gin ning of the set tle ment atMoravany falls ca. 5,500 cal. BC. It should bemen tioned that pot tery dat ing of this kind giveusu ally “broad” re sults (Gomes and Vega, 1999;Stäuble, 1995), i.e. a large pro por tion of suchdates is youn ger than ac tual age of the dated pot -tery. By con trast, the old est part of the range ob -tained for the com bined pot tery dates cor re sponds to the ac tual age of the pot tery (Kaminská et al.,2009).

As for the char coal dates, un doubt edly weshould draw our at ten tion to pos si ble con tam i na -tion of the in fill ings of ei ther anthropogenic fea -tures or even dated sam ples by older char coal,which was re corded in clayey lay ers (see the dateKi-9250 – Ta ble 4) where the anthropogenic pitswere dug into. This is also con firmed by the olderdates ob tained from in fill ings of some fea tures(Poz-22307, Ki-9246, Ki-9248 – Table 7).

The most re cent dates (around 5,000 cal. BC)ob tained for 1ó prob a bil ity and av er age with itsstan dard de vi a tions (Fig. 33) seem also to be in ap -pro pri ate, i.e. they are too late. First and fore most, we should draw at ten tion to the fact that the cor re -spond ing dates ob tained for the pot tery (Fig. 35)are even youn ger (5,000 and 4,760 cal. BC). Thismeans that the global re sult is some what re ju ve -nated by these dates. It has been pre vi ously em -pha sized that such dates are mostly too young,and con se quently the mid dle and es pe cially(!) theyoun ger parts of their cal i bra tion in ter vals shouldbe re jected. Sim i lar dates for charcoals (Fig. 34)are of course a lit tle ear lier, i.e. 5,060 and 5,110cal. BC. More over, in the case of char coal dates a

con tam i na tion of sam ples by car bon of less (seedate Ki-9251 – Ta ble 7) or more (see dates Poz-22308, Poz-22309 – Ta ble 7) youn ger age can notbe ruled out. On the other hand, the prob lem ofold wood gen er ally re quires tak ing into ac count


Ta ble 7Ra dio car bon dates from Moravany

Sam ple No. Date BP Sam pleFea ture/trench

Depth

[cm]

Poz-22307 26950±230 char coal 3/01 105

Ki-9250 19980±460 char coal trench D 11

Ki-9246 11980±160 char coal 2/99A 96

Ki-9248 8090±180 char coal 2/99A 107

Ki-9247 6990±110 char coal 2/99A 85

Ki-10372 6940±60 char coal 3/01 75

Ki-10374 6910±60 char coal 3/01 85

Ki-11152 6580±70 char coal 10/01 65

Ki-9249 6570±120 char coal 2/99B 67

Ki-10375 6570±60 char coal 3/01 85

Ki-11149 6520±80 char coal 3/01 75

Ki-11733 6520±90 pot tery 2/99A 65

Ki-11730 6510±90 pot tery 3/01 65

Ki-11782 6460±90 pot tery 1/98 65

Poz-12243 6400±40 char coal 2/01 90

Ki-11732 6360±90 pot tery 2/01 75

Ki-10373 6340±60 char coal 3/01 85

Ki-11148 6310±70 char coal 3/01 75

Ki-10370 6280±60 char coal 2/01 55

Ki-11737 6280±100 pot tery 3/01 65

Ki-11783 6280±100 pot tery 3/01 55

Ki-11150 6270±70 char coal 3/01 75

Ki-11735 6270±90 char coal 1/98 55

Ki-9251 6250±300 char coal trench C 60

Ki-10371 6250±60 char coal 2/01 75

Ki-11731 6230±90 pot tery 3/01 55

Ki-11734 6220±100 pot tery 2/01 75

Ki-11151 6190±70 char coal 10/01 65

Poz-12250 6180±40 char coal 2/01 95

Ki-11736 6140±100 pot tery 2/01 65

Ki-11738 5970±90 pot tery 1/98 55

Ki-11729 5940±90 char coal 2/99A 65

Ki-11740 5880±120 pot tery 2/01 65

Ki-11739 5430±120 pot tery 2/99A 55

Poz-22308 3285±30 char coal 10/01 55

Poz-22309 1060±30 char coal 1/06 60

the rather youn ger part of the ranges re sult ingfrom the com bi na tion of such dates. Thus, as a hy -poth e sis, we propose a range of 5,200–5,100 cal.BC for the end of the settlement.

Ra dio car bon dates by them selves are not able to give the an swer to the ques tion about the timeframes of the set tle ment. We need to make in thisre gard the sum mary of rel e vant ra dio car bon dataand to in clude ty po logi cal data from the site andar chae o log i cally and geo graph i cally similarphenomena.

DIS CUS SION AND CON CLU SION

The bound aries of the Moravany set tle mentwere ten ta tively de ter mined. Tak ing into ac countthe dis tri bu tion of anthropogenic fea tures and thescat ter ing of artefacts on the ground sur face, itsarea can be es ti mated at 2–3 hect ares. It is a rel a -tively large area for an early Neo lithic site. Ouras sess ment in di cates that the site was not a sea -sonal camp or a short-term set tle ment. The ar -chae o log i cal ev i dence high lights the con ten tioncon cern ing the per ma nency of the vil lage as fol -lows: 1) the full chain of lithic (mainly ob sid ian)tool pro duc tion; 2) large fea tures, some of whichcon tained “dense” ar chae o log i cal ma te rial; 3)post-holes; 4) traces of con tacts with the ter ri to -ries sit u ated north of the Pozdišovský Range in -clud ing Transcarpathian con tacts.

It is dif fi cult to de ter mine whether the set tle -ment func tioned dur ing the en tire pos tu lated timein ter val, i.e. 5,500–5,200/5100 cal. BC, or only in

part of this range. If we con sider the first al ter na -tive as more prob a ble, the ques tion arises whether the set tle ment cov ered an area of 2–3 hect ares allthat time, or was smaller, and dwell ings as well asother struc tures cir cu lated within this area fromtime to time. Cur rently, it is im pos si ble to respond to this question.

One ex pla na tion is the am big u ous chro no log -i cal po si tion of the pot tery. As we noted above, itdem on strates both ar chaic and time-pro gres siveat trib utes. In the ory, such a sit u a tion would re flect multiphase de vel op ment within the set tle ment(two or three phases?). On the other hand, allthese at trib utes have been re corded jointly, bothin hor i zon tal and ver ti cal di men sions. There forethree ba sic, al ter na tive interpretations should behypothesized.

1. This is an ef fect of sec ond ary mix ing of ar -chae o log i cal re mains that orig i nally be longed todif fer ent phases of the set tle ment, which is pos si -ble due to penecontemporaneous in ten sive ero -sion. Ra dio car bon dates would have con firmedsuch al ter na tive. Thus, the set tle ment in such acase would have func tioned over the whole pe ri -ods 5,500–5,200/5,100 cal. BC.

2. We deal with a rel a tively early Neo lithicset tle ment, around 5,500–5,300 cal. BC, with pro -gres sive at trib utes in ce ram ics, inter alia an -nounc ing styl ist ics of the Rašowce group (Šiška,1989).

3. The set tle ment could have ex isted around5,300–5,100 cal. BC, as dem on strated by olderce ramic at trib utes (of the Kopèany group type and even of the Körös-Cris cul ture type) that con tin -ued to be uti lized along side youn ger ones.

Cur rently, on the ba sis of pre vi ous stud ies ofpot tery, lithics (see also re marks be low), and ra -dio car bon dat ing, it is im pos si ble to as sess, whichsce nario is most likely. Per haps the lack of ev i -dence of anthropogenic im pact in the early Neo -lithic en vi ron ment around the site would havebeen an ar gu ment in fa vor of shorter time du ra -tion of set tle ment. Thus, ei ther sce nario No. 1 orNo. 2 should be taken into ac count, i.e. short lifeof the set tle ment (ca. 100–200 years), within thepe riod of ca. 5,500 to 5,200/5,100 BC. On theother hand, the whole area where early Neo lithicre mains are scat tered was set tled and ex ploited.There fore, we sug gest here, that the spa tial size of the village was relatively considerable.

208 M. Nowak et al.

Fig. 35. Sum of prob a bil i ties of “Neo lithic” ra dio car -bon datings from anthropogenic fea tures ob tained from pot tery

Some what sim i lar sit u a tion as in the ce ram ics is noted con cern ing the chipped in dus try. Thereare vis i ble fea tures which de rive from the tra di -tion of the FTN (the most sig nif i cant are toolswith lat eral re touches and micro liths), but on theother hand some new at trib utes have been also re -corded. In sum when this in dus try from Moravany is viewed against the back ground of the tran si tionfrom Körös-Cris to AVK and in the con text ofearly AVK it should be em pha sized that in tak ingthe style, the tech nol ogy and the mor phol ogy ofEast ern Lin ear lithics, it was dif fer ent in spaceand time. In this pro cess, the in ter ac tions be tweenthe FTN Bal kan tra di tion (macroblade tech nol ogy in clud ing press ing tech nique, lat eral re touches,off-site blank and tool pro duc tion, the pres ence of ex tra-lo cal raw ma te ri als, low arte fact dis card)and ad ap ta tions to eco log i cal con di tions and rawma te ri als north of the Cen tral-Eu ro pean Agro-Eco log i cal Bar rier (Sümegi and Kertes, 2002) can be ob served. These ad ap ta tions are man i festedpri mar ily through the on-site way of or ga ni za tionof pro duc tion, us ing lo cal or meso-lo cal raw ma -te ri als (ob sid ian, limnoquartzites, horn stones, and in more north ern sites radiolarites), “mediolithic”tech nol ogy in blade pro duc tion, grow ing role oftransversal re touches (trun ca tions, end-scrap ers),and high arte fact dis card. Be sides the trans for ma -tions that are di rectly the re sult of changes in en -vi ron men tal con di tions, some of them, mainly inthe mor pho log i cal (sty lis tic) and func tional struc -ture of tools, could have been the re sult of eco -nomic changes in the north ern part of theCarpathian Ba sin. This means, ac quir ing a stron -ger tech ni cal role in hunt ing, gath er ing, and fish -ing al though it would be dif fi cult to see suchchanges at Moravany. El e ments of both the FTNBal kan model and adap tive in no va tions in theKörös-Cris – AVK transition and in the earlyAVK occur in varying degrees and differentconfigurations in south-eastern Slovakia andnorth-eastern Hungary.

If the set tle ment at Moravany al ready ex istedaround 5,500–5,400 cal. BC, it would be pos si bleto cor rect the chro no log i cal se quence of the Neo -lithic in the East ern Slovakian Low land, es tab -lished by S. Šiška (1989). Ac cord ing to his work,the Neo lithic pe riod be gan with the so-calledKopèany group. As S. Šiška did not have ra dio -car bon dates, he could not set up the ab so lute

chro nol ogy of this group. He only con structed ascheme of rel a tive chro nol ogy, com par ing theKopèany group with an older phase of the AlföldLin ear Pot tery (sensu stricto) in the Great Hun -gar ian Plain. In the new sce nario the Kopèanygroup would ap pear ear lier. It would be pos si blethat its ear lier part de vel oped at least from 5,500cal. BC partly along side the Szatmár group in thenorthern part of the Great Hungarian Plain.

Even if the set tle ment at Moravany func -tioned only about 5,300–5,100 BC, its in hab it ants be longed to the first Neo lithic pop u la tion in theEast ern Slovakian Low land. Be cause there are noun ques tion able traces of Late Mesolithic oc cu pa -tion in east ern Slovakia (in clud ing Moravany),we could hardly iden tify a lo cal Neolithisationbased on in dig e nous hunter-gath erer pop u la tions.Nei ther does the tech nol ogy of stone pro cess ingpoint to a lo cal Neolithisation, as it is in ter pretedin the early Neo lithic tra di tions of the Great Hun -gar ian Plain. Tak ing into ac count all data, it seems that the most plau si ble in ter pre ta tion is that theset tle ment at Moravany was es tab lished by agroup who, more or less, were di rectly descendedfrom a tradition of Körös-Cris culture.

Ac knowl edge ments

The pro ject has been fi nanced by the Pol ish Com -mit tee of Sci en tific Re search (Grant 0761/H01/2000/19) and the In sti tute of Ar chae ol ogy, Jagiellonian Uni -ver sity. The au thors would like to ex press their ap pre ci -a tion to these in sti tu tions. Thanks are also due toEl¿bieta Pohorska, MA and Urszula B¹k, MA for pre -par ing the il lus tra tions for this ar ti cle. We would alsolike to ex press our grat i tude to Ján Žofèák, the vil lagead min is tra tor at Moravany, for his in valu able helpthrough out our ar chae o log i cal and palaeo geo graphi calwork on the site.

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Nowak et al. – Early Neo lithic of the up per Tisza ba sin: new data from Moravany, East ern Slovakia


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EARLY NEO LITHIC IN THE UP PER TISZA BA SIN: NEW DATA … · lithic of the upper Tisza ba sin. The first trial ex ca - va tions were un der taken in the same year. The re sults turned