The site mapping of Kakucs-Turján by the means of horizontal and vertical proxies: Combining field and basic laboratory methods of geoarchaeology and archaeological prospection
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Date
2019
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Abstract
The homogenous cultural identity that emerged during the Middle Bronze Age (2000–1450 cal BC) in the central territory of the Carpathian Basin is identified uniformly as the Vatya culture. The Vatya people created multilayered tells, open air horizontal, as well as fortified settlements along the western and eastern bank of the Danube river. These archaeological sites are significant elements of both the cultural and natural heritage of the Carpathian Basin. Their significance does not only lie within the possibility to reconstruct the life, society and
material culture of Vatya populations, but the buried soils and anthropogenic sediments hold significant information
on prehistoric human-environment interactions, and on site formation processes that occurred after
the abandonment of the individual settlements. Geophysical prospection methods and field walking helped to
locate and identify the tripartite structure of Kakucs-Turján archaeological site within the territory of the
Danube–Tisza Interfluve. The settlement was established on the border of different geographical micro-regions
and at the conjunction of dissimilar natural geographical environments. The stratigraphy of the site was described
by the means of high resolution and focused series of hand auger observations, as well as on the basis of
basic soil physical and chemical parameters. The detailed macro-morphological description of the soil core
profiles aimed at precisely identifying the soilscape of the site and its vicinity, the stratigraphy of the anthropogenic
and natural sediments of the settlement, but also to facilitate our understanding of the site formation
process. Data gained by the means of geoarchaeological methods not only form the basis of environmental
historical conclusions, but reveals mosaics of the interaction between ancient human populations and their
environment.
1. Introduction
1.1. Archaeological background
One of the most distinctive traits of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA;
ca. 2000–1450 cal BC) in the central basin of the Danube (and in a
broader context across the entire Carpathian Basin) was the dynamic
development of fortified settlements (Earle and Kristiansen, 2010;
Jaeger, 2016). Some of the settlements functioned uninterruptedly for a
number of centuries; as a result, the current thickness of cultural layers
ranges from several to over 10 m (...)
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Keywords
bronze age, stratigraphy, geoarchaeology, fortified settlement
Citation
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2019, vol. 27, art. 101999.