Chronology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Hungary. New results

STUDIA HERCYNIA XXIII/2, 173–197 Chronology of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in Hungary. New results Viktória Kiss – Marietta Csányi – János Dani – Klára P. Fischl – Gabriella Kulcsár – Ildikó Szathmári ABSTRACT The chronological system established by Paul Reinecke played a significant role in developing a chronological classification of the Hungarian Bronze Age. However, the relative chronology which is currently being used for the Early and Middle Bronze Age by the majority of Hungarian scholars is based on István Bóna’s tempo‑ ral sequence. Although Bóna’s relative chronology is still regarded as the ‘lingua franca’ in Hungary, several attempts have been made to synchronise Bóna’s relative chronological system of the Hungarian Bronze Age with the Reinecke scheme in the last two decades. The present paper compares the two relative chronological systems and highlights some common cornerstones, supported by the most recent AMS 14C dates from the Carpathian Basin. KEYWORDS Bronze Age; Hungary; relative chronology; absolute dating. INTRODUCTION TO BRONZE AGE RELATIVE CHRONOLOGICAL PERIODISATION IN HUNGARY The basic relative chronological system of the Central European Bronze Age, established by Paul Reinecke, was published 118 years ago, in 1902. Based on the typological evaluation of bronze artefacts, he divided the Bronze Age into four main phases: ‘Bronzezeit (Br) A–D’, sup‑ plemented by two additional phases: Hallstatt A–B (Reinecke 1902). Some decades later, the system was revised and further elaborated by Friedrich Holste and Kurt Willvonseder (Will‑ vonseder 1937; Holste 1939). In the 1970s, Walter Ruckdeschel gave a more detailed division of the Early Bronze Age, splitting Reinecke’s phases into Br A1a, A1b, A2a, b, and c, based on the typochronology of pin types found in the territory of present‑day Germany (Ruckdeschel 1979). Due to many further refinements and additions, the chronological system developed by Paul Reinecke has significantly evolved over the last few decades. As a part of this, for example, François Bertemes and Volker Heyd recently proposed the introduction of an A0 period preceding the original A1 phase, at least in Central Europe (Bertemes – Heyd 2002). The first attempts at periodisation by Ferenc Tompa based the Hungarian Bronze Age relative chronology on the stratigraphy of the well‑known multilayer tell‑settlement, Tószeg ‑Laposhalom (A–D) (Tompa 1936). Reinecke’s chronology played a significant role in establishing Amália Mozsolics’s tem‑ poral sequence of the Bronze Age in Hungary. She correlated the Hungarian ‘autochtonous Bronze Age’ BIb and II phase (Tószeg A and Tószeg B, Kömlőd–Ercsi horizon) with the Rei‑ necke Bronzezeit A1 phase, and the BIIIa phase (Hajdúsámson horizon) with Reinecke’s Br A2/B1 phase. The final, BIIIb phase (the period of the concealment of the Koszider hoards) was equated with Reinecke’s Br B2 phase according to the modified Holste and Willvonseder 174 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXIII/2 system. In her later works Mozsolics returned to Reinecke’s original system (Fig. 1) and dated the concealment of the Koszider hoards to the end of the Reinecke Br B phase (Mozsolics 1943; 1967; 1984). Fig. 1: Relative chronological system for the Hungarian Bronze Age (after Mozsolics 1984, tab. 1). During the elaboration of the Hungarian Early and Middle Bronze Age chronology, which is commonly used even nowadays, István Bóna relied only a little on the above‑mentioned Central European chronological system. He considered the close relations of the Carpathian Basin to Southeast Europe and the Balkans as well as the timeline suggested by the layers of the tell ‑settlements to be more important. According to him, ‘the A/1 Period of Reinecke’s Central European chronology is equal to Middle Bronze Age 1 in the Middle Danube Basin’ 1 (Bóna 1961, 4; Bóna 1975, 9–10, 25–26, 247). Accordingly, the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age 1 = Br A1, Middle Bronze Age 2 = Br A2. This means that the entire Hungarian Early Bronze Age preced‑ ed the emergence of Central European Early Bronze Age cultures dated to the Reinecke Br A period (Fig. 2), and thus, the Hungarian Bronze Age became largely asynchronous to the Central European Bronze Age chronological scheme. This dichotomy led on the one hand to a decade‑long debate between German, Austrian, Slovakian, Romanian, and former Yugosla‑ vian archaeologists adapting Reinecke’s system and the Hungarian research (Hänsel 1968, Abb. 2), and on the other to the partial disuse of the Central European chronology in Hungary. 1 ‘Die A/1 Periode der Reinecke‑schen mitteleuropäischen Chronologie entspricht dem mittelbronzezeitlichen Abschnitt 1 im mittleren Donaubecken (…) beginnt.’ V. KISS – M. CSÁNYI – J. DANI – K. P. FISCHL – G. KULCSÁR – I. SZATHMÁRI 175 Later, in the 1980s, Nándor Kalicz and Rózsa Kalicz‑Schreiber called attention to the occurence of metal objects at the end of the third phase of the Hungarian Early Bronze Age that can be dated to Br A1 period (Kalicz‑Schreiber 1984, 194). For this reason, it has become necessary over the past two decades to review the parallelization of the Hungarian Bronze Age periods and the Reinecke system (Kulcsár – Szabó 1997, 154; David 1998; Kiss 2002; Kiss et al. 2015a; Fischl et al. 2015). RECENT DISCUSSION CONCERNING THE RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY OF THE EARLY AND MIDDLE BRONZE AGE IN HUNGARY Even the earliest works tried to place the Bronze Age of the Carpathian Basin on the absolute time scale: its beginning was set at 2000 BC, while its end was placed around 900 BC (Tompa 1936). Contemporaneous dating difficulties, however, are well reflected by the thoughts of Amália Mozsolics: ‘We have to admit that we do not have accurate data on which we can of‑ fer – so popular – exact dates to museum visitors. […] Hungarian researchers generally keep the opinion that the Bronze Age started in 2000 BC. These numbers can only be classified as estimates and not as irreducible scientific data’2 (Mozsolics 1943, 11). Later on, the absolute chronological scheme of the Hungarian Bronze Age was determined by Bóna’s previously mentioned summaries (Bóna 1958, 223; Bóna 1961; Bóna 1975, 25–27). According to this, the Bronze Age in Hungary commenced in 1950±50 BC, while the Middle Bronze Age (contemporaneous with Br A1) started in 1700 and ended in 1350 BC (parallel with Br B1) (Fig. 2). Fig. 2: Relative chronological system for the Hungarian Bronze Age (after Bóna 1958, 223). 2 Translated from the Hungarian text by Ágnes Király. 176 STUDIA HERCYNIA XXIII/2 Although Bóna’s system is still regarded as the ‘lingua franca’ of chronological thinking among national scholars, there have been attempts to synchronise his relative chronological classification of the Hungarian Bronze Age with the Reinecke scheme and with other regions of Bronze Age Europe, partly based on the acquisition of absolute dates. One of the first attempts was the publication of the Bronzezeit i (...truncated)