A special find assemblage from the Neolithic of the Tisza region and its latest archaeological and archaeometric analysis
A special find assemblage from the Neolithic of the Tisza region and its latest archaeological and archaeometric analysis

Summary/Abstract: The settlement of Tiszaigar lies some 10 km south of Tiszafüred in the northern Hungarian Plain in eastern Hungary. A site known as Tiszaigar-Homokbánya extends over a roughly 250 × 150 m large area about 500 m south of the village, to the north of the entrance to the Arboretum, on the high bluff overlooking the floodplain and a former curved channel of the Tisza to the west. A large, abandoned quarry pit with a diameter of 100 m, whose depth reached 5 m in some spots, can be found in its northern part. In 1984, the pupils of the local school noticed the remains of a disturbed and already largely eroded Middle Neolithic pit as well as several other features of differing sizes in the sand quarry's south-western part. They found countless pottery sherds, bones, and burnt daub fragments in the pits' ashy section, alongside a most unusual clay tablet lying at a depth of 73 cm from the surface. The remains of the pit were excavated as part of a small archaeological excavation conducted between May 11 and 13, 1984. However, no more than a brief preliminary report was published about the Tiszaigar site and its finds. The finds recovered from the pit indicated that the contents of the Tiszaigar pit diverged from the ‘norm’ and the usual content of the refuse pits of the Alföld Linear Pottery (ALP) culture. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that a part of the finds represented types with a special symbolic value, while others fell within the usual spectrum of household refuse, suggesting that they were interwoven with the community activities associated with them. The hearth on the pit's floor (layer E) and the layer of burnt daub fragments in the pit's uppermost part (layer B) can be regarded as marking the initial and final acts of a specific set of activities. The assemblage of ritual material remains, and its physical context was situated in this matrix, which also determined the choreography of the one-time symbolic activities. The multidisciplinary examination of the archaeological record has shed light on the nature of the structured deposit found in the pit from several perspectives. The two radiocarbon dates for the remarkable Tiszaigar assign the assemblage to the close of the Middle Neolithic, to between 5300 and 5070 (86%) cal BC.

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