László Domboróczky

Heves County Museum Directorate, Eger

With the occurrence of the food production economy during the Early Neolithic e.g. in the first half of the 6th Millennium BC a new, up to that time unknown lifeway spread through the southern and then in the northern territories of the Carpathian Basin. Compared to the preceding Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, fundamental changes took place, which had their imprints on the extremely increased archaeological material rich in new types and features.

The study of the Neolithisation process stood long since in the foreground of the archaeological research. The systematical investigation of the Körös culture, banded tightly to the south-eastern European early Neolithic cultures began in the 1930s. Albeit the recognition of the linear pottery phenomenon already happened in the late 19th century, the culture of the Alföld Linear Pottery (ALPC), which in time followed the Körös culture and which in space developed northern from the latter scattering through its history continuously southwards, was defined relatively late in the 1960s and 1970s. The traces of the local Mesolithic was in effect discovered only in the 1990s, although on theoretical grounds some kind of Mesolithic inhabitants were postulated much earlier.

Until recently almost every possible scenario of the neolithisation process was sketched by the research. These are differing from one another mainly in the role the Mesolithic aboriginals played in the process but are nevertheless such theoretical constructions which were based, unfortunately, only on certain segments of the archaeological findings. According to the hitherto dominant view, the people of the Körös culture were southern settlers wandering up to the middle of the Great Hungarian Plain, where the local unfamiliar ecological endowments and the resistance of the aboriginal population forced them to stop and let them only the possibility to detour to the east and colonise with smaller settlements the Upper Tisza and Szamos region. In the developement of the ALPC to the local Mesolithic inhabitants was attached decisive importance who in the course of a long side by side living with the Körös culture and after a rapid acculturation process took over every aspects of the Neolithic novelties and finally even conquer the territory of the Körös culture.

In the last decade, partly due to the fieldwork done in Heves County and to the different kind of examinations of the excavated material on several interdisciplinary fields, we have managed to paint a more realistic picture on the ALPC then ever before. Fortunately we have new results in the sphere of the research of the Körös culture as well, so we can contribute to the discussion of the neolithisation in possession of rich comparative material. In the light of these we are now attributing larger impact to the Körös culture in the developement of the ALPC so we can justify just those opinions which dealt only with marginal role of the aboriginal Mesolithic population - at least in this phase. The Mesolithic research which even in our county is still on their way does not contradict to this view so far.

Of course, for the better understanding of the process of neolithisation we could not in the past and will never in the future have afford to miss those examinations which can enlighten the inner coherence and reveal the basic characteristics of newer and newer find-groups. That is why could be important those ceramic investigations which are proposed to be done within the frame of that European co-operation which serves as the basis for our future gatherings. The ceramics to be investigated are deriving from Körös, early ALP-Szatmár as well as classical and late ALP times from radiocarbon dated pits. Our main aim is to reveal and explain the differences and similarities.