A Dunántúl Története A Későbronzkorban (BTM műhely 1. kötet ...

supplementary animal husbandry along the riverside plains. The groups of people north of the Balaton and in the
larger settlement centers continued mainly with shepherding. The highly variegated nature of these economic systems
of the groups of people living in a closely linked symbiosis created an adequate economic balance. The continuous
maintenance of this balance could not have been possible without an adequate central power. This economic
variety is not accompanied everywhere by sharp differences in the material cultures. In spite of the pottery showing
some local differences, the bronze industry is rather uniformed within a Central European relation during this
period. It produced such bronze objects which had barely shown any regional differences. The styles reveal only
slightly the differences of the products of the different workshops. According to the present state of our knowledge
it seems likely that the industry working with bronze as raw material has reached its peak, it has developed
the most practical forms and shapes allowed by the material, the best tool types to perform the different work
phases, the technique and last but not least the relatively most modem attacking and defense arms. It seems that
only very few of the earlier widely used jewelry types have survived. The simple spectacle type fibula, some pins
(egg - and vase headed), round belt joints, wire ringlets, bracelets bent of flat bars with pine ornamentation which
pushed the earlier types out can be above all mentioned along the bronzes of apparel. It is quite certain that the
of ringlets, bracelets even represented an exchange item to facilitate trade, provided the function of money, in
fact.
The burial, artistic, and religious manifestations of the period are accompanied by very similar or almost identical
characteristics of the material culture. The monuments of the religious aspects are witness to a very complex spiritual
context. The cult life of the Urnfield Culture people is determined by an astral and bird symbolism closely related to
fertility and at the same time by the lack of human representations, mainly of facial features is an identical phenomenon
within the culture from Brno to Donja Dolina and from Munich to Este. The religious ideology is very
complex, its variegated nature is indicated by the heterogeneous elements composing the culture. The bird cult
might be the tradition of totemistic ideas of the shepherding tribes, whereas fertility magic referring to astral
symbolism is the accompanying feature of an agricultural way of life. The interpretation of these is not an easy task
and the limited methods of archaeology in themselves are not sufficient to solve the question. 534
The burial rite of the Urnfield period shows a highly variegated picture, especially in its earlier phase. The basic
method is cremation, not considering some very early skeletal graves of very uncertain dating. Some experts mention
the scattered ashes rite which is general in the southwest Slovakian Őaka horizon and develops only gradually into
urn burial in the Hetény cemeteries as one of the proofs of the Urnfield continuity. These experts believe their
thesis to be valid for Transdanubia as well. In any case it is certain that during Vál II the urn rite is used solely. The
graves are generally flat, although in some cemeteries (Szentendre) they coach vessel urn containing grave of the
Kánya cemetery of the Vál I phase might have also been covered by a tumulus according to the report of the excavating
archaeologist. Thus the variegated burial rite of the younger phase of the Urnfield period has become more
uniform, the other phenomena experienced during this period support this also.
Concluding from the archaeologically also determined uniformity of the material and spiritual culture it can be
said that the different groups of people of the Middle Danubian Urnfield Culture during the fourth phase were
Ünked very closely to each other which might indicate the existence of a more or less unified political power. The
base for an economic-political power is no longer the agricultural production but a mass producing bronze industry
at its peak and the closely connected trade, to a degree, based on monetary accounting. Only a few could leam the
master level of bronze producing which in itself indicates a basic change in the social structure during the Late
Bronze Age. The clan-tribe society based on birthright hierarchy passed and the formations named as military
democracies were the social frames of the people of the Bronze Age. The first revolutionary change of the social
development of the primitive communities happened during the early phase of the UK and consequently reorganized
economic-producing conditions determined for a long time the direction of the development of a highly stratum
conscious society.
The most difficult aspect of the examination of Bronze Age society by archaeological methods is the ethnic
determination of the different cultures. The mutual material and spritual characteristics experienced in the progress
of the Urnfield Culture do not indicate yet the existence of a unified ethnic picture, nevertheless we are witness to a
process which eventually lead to such a formation in the mid Danube Basin. Primarily, according to linguistics and
the correlation of data used by classical sources, it seems likely that the population of the area in question was not
Illyrian at the end of the Bronze Age as presumed earlier. The Illyrians can be related more closely to the much more
southern Glasinnac and circle and not with the Middle European Urnfield cultural circle. After excluding the identification
with the Illyrians, the only remaining possibility for us is to look for the descendants of the Urnfield people
in the Pannonian natives, the people who lived in the area prior to the Roman conquest. The representatives of this
hypothesis call the bearers of this culture ancient Pannonian. We believe that the Urnfield Culture provided only a
framework for the formation of the Pannonian ethnogenesis and in the final formation several ethnic groups must
have played a role, even later also. 535
Even if some doubt surrounds the hypothesis concerning the ancient Pannonian ethnogenesis we can be sure that
the first historically known groups of people in the Danube area made the first step for a unified nation within the