Development of a Middle Bronze Age (1900–1500 cal BC) house at the site of Százhalombatta-Földvár, Hungary: detecting choice of materials by the means of archaeological thin section soil micromorphology and phytolith analysis

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01205-z (2020) 12:258 ORIGINAL PAPER Development of a Middle Bronze Age (1900–1500 cal BC) house at the site of Százhalombatta-Földvár, Hungary: detecting choice of materials by the means of archaeological thin section soil micromorphology and phytolith analysis Gabriella Kovács 1 & Ákos Pető 2 & Magdolna Vicze 1 Received: 18 March 2020 / Accepted: 11 September 2020 # The Author(s) 2020 Abstract Százhalombatta-Földvár Bronze Age tell settlement is one of the most extensively studied sites of Hungary. Interdisciplinary approach is one of the key factors in understanding the past here. Therefore, a range of natural scientific methods are applied, including thin section soil micromorphology and phytolith analysis. The high resolution of these techniques is used to add details that are impossible via traditional archaeological means. In this paper, we aim to look at decision-making in choices of construction materials. A Middle Bronze Age house (ID 3147), belonging to the so-called Vatya Culture, was sampled to investigate the used materials, the building techniques and space use. Earthen floors, clay floor, wall and hearth material are under the microscope for a better understanding of Bronze Age construction and everyday life. Micro fragments are traced to investigate space use and activities inside the house. It is also our intention to further test the conjoint application of the abovementioned methods to add data and encourage work between the experts of the two fields as there is only a handful of such studies available. Keywords Thin section soil micromorphology . Phytolith analysis . Geoarchaeology . Site stratigraphy . Taphonomy . Bronze age . Vatya culture . Carpathian Basin Introduction Archaeological background Százhalombatta-Földvár is one of the key sites in recent Bronze Age research in the Carpathian Basin. It is a tell Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01205-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Ákos Pető Gabriella Kovács Magdolna Vicze 1 ‘Matrica’ Museum and Archaeological Park, Gesztenyés út 1-3, Százhalombatta 2440, Hungary 2 Institute of Nature Conservation and Landscape Management, Szent István University, Páter Károly u. 1, Gödöllő 2100, Hungary settlement, with proximately 5-m thick cultural layers, that is seated on the high bank of the Danube. The site was first occupied during the Early Bronze Age (from 2300/2200 BC) and was inhabited continuously till the end of the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age (i.e. 1500/1450 BC). Its location has always kept the area in the centre of interest during the Bronze Age, just as well as today for modern research. The settlement is located on a promontory-like plateau some 160 m above the river, providing an excellent view of upstream, down and also across the river over the flat floodplain on the other side. The modern archaeological research of the site started during the 2nd half of the twentieth century. The result of that was the identification of SzázhalombattaFöldvár as one of the outstanding fortified settlements of the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age cultural unit called Vatya. The most recent and still ongoing excavation project started in 1998 with the primary aim of understanding Bronze Age social dynamics playing within the daily life and routines of a presumably high-tier settlement with the help of the most recent interdisciplinary developments (Kristiansen 2000; Poroszlai and Vicze 2004a; Sørensen et al. in press; Vicze et al. 2017). The site since then is a centre for evolving new 258 Page 2 of 23 methods and supplying data and material for novel research areas. The Vatya culture chronologically is coeval with the timespan of the Middle Bronze Age (1900/1800–1500/ 1450 BC) in Hungary. Their territory geographically is located in the central part of the country encompassing both banks of the Danube. It is a so-called tell-forming society, which means that their settlements have continuous occupation for hundreds of years and their households and activity areas were rebuilt and reconstructed over and over the remains of previous ones. This gives ample opportunity to specifically focus on domestic contexts (Sørensen and Vicze 2013; Vicze et al. 2014) among which constructing, maintaining and rebuilding of houses and features are of primary interest (Sørensen 2010; Kovács 2013; Vicze 2013). Our understanding of Vatya houses is that they are usually 8–10 m long, 4–5 m wide and were made of wattle and daub walls seated between posts. The posts were carrying the weight of the slanting roofs composed of reed or thatch on wooden frames. The posts were integrated into the walls with plastering (using clay), thus visually producing an even surface both inside and outside. At Százhalombatta, we find that there are different Vatya houses used on the settlement at one time. There are houses with one, two or probably even with three rooms. Each house has at least one hearth or fireplace. Although, having more than one cooking/baking/roasting surfaces/structures in one house appears to be more common, than having only one hearth (Vicze 2013). Clay seems to be one of the most regularly used building material at the site (Kovács and Vicze 2019). It is used in a wide range including walls, floors, hearths, pottery and also ‘furniture-like’ inner constructions such as boxes, weights (e.g. loom-weights) etc. (see Vicze 2013). Clay is an easily accessible raw material and with diverse tempering and composition it can be used extensively for different constructions (see with further references Kovács and Vicze 2019; also, for clay in general Sofaer 2015). During our excavation at Százhalombatta-Földvár we carefully study and document these diversities. With that, we wish to recognize the technological knowledge, the knowhow, and also some of the decisions behind specific raw material choices and their application. Part of our thin section soil micromorphological and phytolith sampling was focused on these questions, especially when during excavation we have realized, that in contrary to our previous knowledge and expectation, different raw material was used for similar constructions. This article is one of the studies discussing the results of our detailed interdisciplinary research methods and the first one testing the conjoint application of thin section micromorphology and phytolith analysis. Whilst micromorphological analysis is an eligible method to observe, describe and understand the nuances of building technological choices, phytolith analysis adds the Archaeol Anthropol Sci (2020) 12:258 Fig. 1 Location of Százhalombatta-Földvár Bronze Age fortified„ settlement within Hungary; the position of the settlement on the loess plateau: the yellow line indicates the hypothesised extension of the site, which was partly (...truncated)