Golden jewels and bronze weapons beneath the railway: the treasures of the Bronze Age cemetery at Nagycenk 1.

When traveling to Sopron by train, no one would think that at Nagycenk, a 4,000-year-old cemetery was recently excavated beneath the present railway track. With the leadership of János Gömöri, archaeologists of the Museum of Sopron carried out excavations preceding railway construction works in 2004-2005, in the immediate vicinity of the Austrian border. The survey area is located in the valley of the Arany Creek, which may have served as an important transport route since prehistoric times. That’s why the present-day arable land beside the meadows was inhabited in many time periods. The excavations here revealed pits of the Late Neolithic Lengyel culture, houses of Tóthczenk village dating to the Árpádian Era, as well as various features of the Bronze Age (Gömöri 2007, 2011, 2016).

For us, the most exciting part of the site is the settlement inhabited at the turn of the Early and Middle Bronze Age (2100-1750 BC) and the contemporaneous 27 graves, which we have been evaluating recently (Gömöri et al. 2018).

 

In situ photo of Grave 61, a middle-aged man buried with bronze arm ring
(Photo: János Gömöri)

Gifts for the journey to the Otherworld

The trench (100×60 m) was situated to the northwest of the Arany Creek, and Bronze Age burials were located on the northern edge of the excavated area. The cemetery was not fully excavated, some of the graves are still to be explored.However, the find material is still remarkable, as nearly 14% of all known inhumation graves (27 out of 200 excavated tombs in Hungary) belonging to the Gáta-Wieselburg culture are represented by the Nagycenk burials. In the period between 2100 and 1600 BC, communities living in the present-day borders of Austria, Slovakia and Hungary (occupying the western part of the Carpathian Basin between the Rába River and the Vienna Basin) placed the belongings, weapons and costume elements of the deceased into the graves, as well as characteristic ceramic vessels (eg. double handled jugs, single handled mugs, amphorae with decorative ribs). The latter have probalbly included gifts/food for the journey to the Otherworld, as a part of the funeral ceremony. Tombs found in the cemetery of Nagycenk so far can be dated to the earlier centuries of the above mentioned period, to approx. 2100-1750 BC (see the radiocarbon dates in our next entry).

 

Jug from Grave 51
(Photo: Péter Hámori)

Only a small part of similar findings from present-day Hungary and the more than 1000 inhumation graves discovered in the territory of Austria has been published (Kőszegi 1958, Bóna 1960, Bóna 1975, 237-239, Hicke 1987, Nagy-Figler 2009, Krenn- Leeb 2011; Nagy 2013; Melis 2017). Therefore the processing of the Nagycenk burials is a significant step forward in the archaeological research of the Bronze Age of Western Transdanubia. The analysis of the excavated settlement part will be published later.

Rich finds from the graves of women, men and children buried at Nagycenk (30 pieces of copper/bronze and 5 golden jewels) indicate that the settlement and the cemetery could have belonged to a small community whose leaders had access status indicator objects by means of long-distance exchange (golden hair rings, amber, copper and bronze ornaments, weapons).

 

Copper dagger from Grave 1: the blade of the dagger was attached with three nails to the wooden grip
(Photo: Viktória Kiss)

Is the cemetery a mirror of living society?

Grave goods may allow us to conclude the social status of the deceased. It is important to note, however, that the findings reveal only a part of onetime artefacts, since the preservation of organic materials (textiles, leather, wooden items, wicker baskets) in the Carpathian Basin is extremely poor (wooden residues from the Nagycenk cemetery are also to be reported in our later paper). In addition, we must also consider that the funeral ritual partly reflects the role of the deceased in their contemporaneous society and the commemoration of relatives (Chapman 2013).

 

Golden hair ring from Grave 55 while weighing
(Photo: Viktória Kiss)

 

Two double burials were excavated at Nagycenk, so there were 29 individuals buried altogether in the 27 graves: 8 men, 12 women, two adults of unidentifiable sex and 7 children. The physical anthropological analyses of Zsuzsanna Zoffmann (Zoffmann 2008) and Kitti Köhler, as well as the ongoing archeogenetic and stable isotopic studies may result in interesting data on the lifestyles, illnesses and possible family relationships of the community of the village.

Leaders of the community may be identified by their copper, bronze and golden artefacts. Regarding both the number and the substance of the buried objects two men’s graves stand out from the graves surrounding them. The young man placed under a wooden construction in Grave 1 was buried with two copper neck rings, two daggers, a sprial arm ring and his outer garment was clasped by a copper pin. According to the study of metal objects, his grave goods were not made of bronze, but of non-alloy copper, which suggests that he could have been the leader of the older generation of the village. A middle-aged warrior was lying in Grave 55, whose neck- and arm ring and four golden hair rings indicate a prominent status as well. His bronze dagger and axe refer to the development of metallurgical technology, the appearance of alloying copper with tin, and in this context, a later time period. According to this, one of the later leaders of the village could rest in this grave.

 

Map of the Bronze Age cemetery part at Nagycenk-Laposrét, indicating the sex of the deceased and the metal finds
(Map by László Gucsi, based on the map of János Gömöri )

 

Among the female graves, the tomb of a young girl buried with a bronze sheet diadem (Grave 77) is a particularly beautiful find in the Bronze Age of Hungary.

 

Detail of Nagycenk-Laposrét Grave 77, a 17-19-year-old girl with a bronze sheet diadem on the skull
(Photo: Gömöri János)

 

The thin bronze strap was probably worn together with a hat-like headband or veil on the forehead as a clamping strap tied together with a thread on the back. In addition, the female graves at Nagycenk indicate that women’s wear was characterized by bronze hair rings as well. Similar jewels are known from the Early Bronze Age cemeteries in Austria, which served as the basis for numerous costume reconstructions (Neugebauer 1994; Grömer 2016).

 

Bronze Age costume reconstruction at an event of the Iron Age Danube project
(Source: http://celefindel.blogspot.hu/2017/03/iron-age-danube-model.html)

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to the staff of the Sopron Museum and especially to the excavating archaeologist, János Gömöri, for the possibility of joint processing of the find material. The complete publication of the cemetery can be found in Acta Archaeologica Hungarica 69 (Gömöri et al., 2018). The detailed examination of the raw material and manufacturing technique of ceramics and metal objects is carried out in collaboration with the Laboratory for Conservation and Applied Research of the Hungarian National Museum, the Budapest Neutron Center and the CEZA GgMBH laboratory of Mannheim. The results of these studies are going to be published in further articles. The three radiocarbon measurements on samples from human bones were made in the Hertelendi Laboratory of Environmental Studies, Institute for Nuclear Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

 

Viktória Kiss – Eszter Melis

 

References

Bóna I.: Az oroszvári 4. női sír melldísze (Adatok a közép-dunamedencei bronzkori viselethez II.) (The pectoral ornament of the female grave 4 at Oroszvár. Data Illustrating the Costume of the Bronze Age in the Middle Danube Basin. II.). Archaeologiai Értesítő 87 (1960) 198–203.

Bóna I.: Die mittlere Bronzezeit Ungarns und ihre südöstlichen Beziehungen. ArchHung 49. Budapest 1975.

Chapman, R.: Death, Burial and Social Representation. In: Nilsson Stutz, L., Tarlow, S.: The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial. Oxford 2013, 47–57.

Gömöri J.: Nagycenk, Köves-rét dűlő (Győr-Moson-Sopron megye) In: Százszorszépek. Emberábrázolás az őskori Nyugat-Magyarországon. Kiállítási katalógus. Ed.: Ilon G. Szombathely 2007, 114–117.

Gömöri J.: A nagycenki idolpár lelőkörülményei (Die Fundumstände des neolithischen Idolpaares von Nagycenk). In: „…eleitől fogva”. A 75 éves Makkay János köszöntése. Szerk. Fekete M., Vitári Wéber A. SpecN Supplementum 11. Vivarium fontium 6. Pécs 2011, 75–94.

Gömöri J.: Fertő-Hanság Nemzeti Park, a Fertő D-i partszakaszának régészeti lelőhelyei (2012-ig) (Archäologische Fundstellen am Südufer der Neusiedler Sees, bis 2012). In: Fertő–Hanság – Neusiedler See–Seewinkel. Nemzeti Park – Monografikus tanulmányok a Fertő és a Hanság vidékéről. Eds: L. Kárpáti, J. Fally. Fertő–Hanság Nemzeti Park Igazgatóság, Budapest 2012, 258–270.

Gömöri J.: Árpád-kori település Nagycenk határárában – Előzetes jelentés (Settlement from the Árpád Age in the victinity of Nagycenk). In: Beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam. Ünnepi kötet Tomka Péter 75. születésnapjára. Eds: Csécs T., Takács M. Győr 2016, 229–244.

Gömöri J., Melis E., Kiss V.: A cemetery of the Gáta–Wieselburg Culture at Nagycenk (Western Hungary). Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 69 (2018) 5–82.

Grömer, K.: The Art of Prehistoric Textile Making. The development of craft traditions and clothing in Central Europe. Wien 2016.

Hicke, W.: Hügel- und Flachgräber der Frühbronzezeit aus Jois und Oggau. Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten aus dem Burgenland 75. Eisenstadt 1987, 5–229.

Kőszegi F.: Az oroszvári bronzkori temető (The Bronze Age cemetery at Oroszvár /Rusovce). Folia Archaeologica 10 (1958) 43–59.

Krenn-Leeb, A.: Zwischen Buckliger Welt und Kleinen Karpaten – Die Lebenswelt der Wieselburg-Kultur. Archäologie Österreichs 22 (2011) 11–26.

Melis E.: Analysis of secondary mortuary practices in the Early Bronze Age inhumation burials from North-Western Hungary. Musaica Archaeologica 2017 (1) 7–22.

Nagy M.: Der südlichste Fundort der Gáta-Wieselburg-Kultur in Zsennye-Kavicsbánya/Schottergrube, Komitat Vas, Westungarn. Savaria 36 (2013) 75–173.

Nagy M., Figler A.: Dentáliumékszerek a Gáta-Wieselburg kultúra temetkezéseiben (Dentalium jewellery in the burials of the Gáta-Wieselburg culture). In: MΩMΟΣ VI. Nyersanyagok és kereskedelem. Őskoros Kutatók VI. Összejövetelének konferenciakötete – Kőszeg, 2009. március 19–21. Ed.: Ilon G. Szombathely 255–266.

Neugebauer, J-W.: Bronzezeit in Ostösterreich. St. Pölten–Wien 1994.

Zoffmann Zs.: A bronzkori Gáta-Wieselburg kultúra Nagycenk-Laposi rét lelőhelyen feltárt temetkezéseinek embertani vizsgálata (The anthropologic study of the burials unearthed at the Nagycenk-Laposi rét site of the Bronze Age Gáta-Wieselburg culture). Arrabona 46 (2008) 9–34.



Back