Middle Bronze Age Encrusted Pottery in Western Hungary

The principal aim of this work is to present a detailed analysis and interpretation of the material culture and the social complexity of the Transdanubian Encrusted Pottery culture from Central and south Transdanubia. The chronological period of this study spans the Central European Early Bronze Age. This equates to the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary.
The subject of my study was motivated by a number of reasons. During the last few decades our understanding of the Middle Bronze Age in the Carpathian Basin and the chronology of the Koszider period have been revised. New archaeological data have been generated, mainly from excavations of teli sites on the Great Hungarian Plain. Meanwhile, the western Hungarian territories were neglected from this perspective which led to a geographical imbalance in Hungarian Middle Bronze Age research. At the same time unfortunately, the material from earlier excavations remained unpublished. In István Bóna’s monograph only a selection of previously excavated assemblages was represented. Moreover, from the detailed find collection of Gábor Bándi a list of sites were published alone. The key works of István Torma, Tibor Kovács and Szilvia Honti concentrate on small find assemblages; larger contexts await publication. As a result, despite over a hundred years of research, understanding of the burial customs of the Transdanubian Encrusted Pottery culture is still very vague and based upon only partially excavated cemeteries with only a few burials. The culture’s settlements, houses, and buildings were likewise poorly researched. It should be noted, however, that this was not due to a low level of archaeological survey and excavation of sites in these areas dating to these periods, but rather that the large quantity of excavated material awaited study.
Beside unpublished earlier collections I was allowed access to recently excavated material curated by county museums: Balatoni Museum at Keszthely, Dráva Museum at Barcs, Esterházy Museum at Pápa, Janus Pannonius Museum at Pécs, Laczkó Dezső Museum at Veszprém, Rippl-Rónai Museum at Kaposvár, and the Wosinsky Mór Museum at Szekszárd. In this regard, I would like to thank Judit Barna, István Ecsedy, Szilvia Honti, Gábor Ilon, Borbála Maráz, Róbert Müller, Erzsébet Nagy, János Odor, Judit Regenye, Géza Szabó, and Márta Vizi for their help. Gratitude is also extended to the archaeological departments of the above mentioned museums. I am indebted Mrs. Bándi for helping me to work with some of Gábor Bándi’s excavation results and documentation from Szebény–Paperdő and Turony–Hosszúföldek–Kosaras. I express my gratitude to Edit Bárdos, Krisztina Somogyi, Gergely Kovaliczky and Andrea Vaday for the possibility of processing the newly excavated material from Kaposvár, Szederkény and Ménfőcsanak. I wish to say many thanks to István Bóna, Tibor Kovács, István Torma and Gábor Vékony for their valuable suggestions and their permission to work with their unpublished material. Also, thanks to Mária Bondár for her helpful advice and support, and to Eszter Bánffy and Josef Maran for the possibility of a research grant in Germany, University of Heidelberg. I am also very grateful for the funding of my doctoral research which was provided by the Archaeological Institute of Eötvös Loránd Science University and the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.