Tradition and modernity in the lithic assemblage of Mogyorósbánya Late Palaeolithic site

Abstract

The time slot for Middle and Late Upper Palaeolithic (MUP, LUP) in Hungary is filled in by two large cultural phyla of the Gravettian entity, notably the blade-dominated and the pebble-dominated industries, extending through three chronological horizons. The Epigravettian cultures following the Last Glacial Maximum are not only temporal successors of the "Golden Age" in an etymological sense but can also be conceived as late, slightly impoverished descendants of the Pavlovian culture. The Ságvárian culture is partly contemporary with this blade-based Epigravettian, and successfully adapted to the same ecological conditions of the Late Würm. This industry is characterised by the pebble-working tradition, which latently survived since the Lower Palaeolithic. Localities belonging to this entity are classified, on the basis of the priority principle, into the Ságvárian culture. The viable, strong culture existed in the interior parts of the Carpathian Basin around the last cold maximum of the Würm. The type spectrum of the tool kit fits well into the Gravettian mosaic although it is characterised by different parameters. Its direct antecedents, time and place of its formation, the limits of extension and afterlife are so far unknown. The eponymous site of the culture is Ságvár-Lyukasdomb, serving also for the stratotype of the Ságvár geochronological period.

Lithic analysis of the Middle and Late Upper Palaeolithic in Hungary

“…EE assemblages of hungary are dominated by local or regional and distant raw materials. The proportion of TC material is 6% at Mogyorósbánya, 3.5% at Madaras, and none was found at Szob (Dobosi et al 1989;Markó 2007;Dobosi 2016). The Mogyorósbánya TC material percent is higher than what was found at most LG sites except Bodrogkeresztúr, and the two EE sites, which was not predicted by present study based on the known raw material circulation in the Carpathian basin (Lengyel 2014a).…”

“…The pebbles are chiefly of radiolarite, mostly Bakony types, which seem to be the closest raw material source to Ságvár. Among Ságvárian sites not analysed here, Mogyorósbánya and Szob were presented as pebble consumers (Markó 2007(Markó , 2011Dobosi 2016). The exploitation of pebbles at these sites seems to be related with the fact that this raw material was the closest available to the knappers.…”

“…With the onset of the LGM, human settlements seem to have disappeared from the north of the Carpathians and the Sudetes, thus Early Epigravettian lithics mostly are found in Moravia, Lower Austria and in the Carpathian basin. In hungary, taking into account the armature types and their frequencies, Ságvár, Budapest Corvin-tér (Lengyel 2016), the Pilismarót site cluster (Pálrét, Diós, Bitóc and Bánom) (Dobosi , 2014, Jászfelsőszentgyörgy , Szob (Markó 2007), Madaras (Dobosi et al 1989), Mogyorósbánya (Dobosi 2016), herman Ottó Cave (Szolyák 2008(Szolyák -2009), Verőce (Bradák et al 2014) and Tarcal-Citrombánya (Dobosi 1974) can be listed here. Sites of this period outside hungary are Kašov upper layer (Bánesz et al 1992) in East Slovakia, Grubgraben (Montet-White 1990;Neugebauer-Maresch et al 2016) in Lower Austria and Stránská skála IV (Svoboda 1991;Škrdla, Plch 1993) and Mohelno-Plevovce (Demidenko et al 2018) in Moravia.…”

“…Szob and Mogyorósbánya also yielded a set of obsidian artifacts showing relations towards the Tokaj Mountains area (Markó 2007(Markó , 2017. The Gravettian Entity Model describes Ságvár and the Ságvárian culture as Pebble Gravettian (Dobosi 2016). At Ságvár, although pebble raw material is abundant, it far does not dominate the whole assemblage (Lengyel 2011).…”

“…As a result, the presence of a classic slender blade technology supported to originate the Epigravettian in the Pavlovian along the Blade Gravettian lineage. The Ságvárian that produced mainly flakes and short blades was an outlier of the blade technology heritage, and its pebble economy gave it an atypical character rooted probably in the pebble user Middle Palaeolithic (Tolnai-Dobosi 2001;Dobosi 2004Dobosi , 2009bDobosi , 2016.…”