may have been nomadic pastoralists who had come from the Pontic steppe, the
grave goods have few significant parallels on the steppe.^32 In both Transylvania
and Hungary the many archaeological cultures were not only similar to each other
but also were not much different from what has been found to the south (through
the Balkans, as far as what later would be Thessaly, Macedon and Thrace) and
to the east (at Alishar Hüyük in central Anatolia and even in Transcaucasia).^33
John Younger has observed that until the end of EH II the stone and clay seal-
stamps used in the Aegean world were local versions of a widespread koine,
reaching from central Anatolia to Hungary.^34 Perhaps a still wider koinecould
have been observed at the beginning of the second millennium BC.
More impressive than anything in Transylvania and Hungary were “tell-
settlements” that early in the second millennium BCbegan to appear along the
western Carpathians, especially where copper and other mineral deposits were
located, or along trade routes. As tells, they were occupied continuously for many
generations and by the Bz A2 period a few of them were very large villages, perhaps
with close to 1000 people. Examples are the Slovakian sites of Spišsky Štvrtok,
which commands a pass through the Carpathians, and Fidvár, one of several
settlements along the southern slopes of the western Carpathians. Also illustrative
is the similarly named Feudvar in northeastern Serbia: the Bronze Age community
at Feudvar lay on the right bank of the Tisza river shortly before it flows into the
Danube. It was a planned community, and a center for the working of tin bronze.^35
These and other sites were “fortified” by ditches and ramparts, possibly supple -
mented at Spišsky Štvrtok by a stone wall. Although the tell-settlements continued
to flourish through most of the Bz A2 period, by the end of that period they were
shrinking and in the Bz B period (the Tumulus culture) most of them had been
either destroyed or abandoned. At Fidvár in Slovakia a settlement covering eleven
hectares in the Hatvan-Únĕtice period scarcely covered a single hectare at the end
of the Bz A2 period.^36
The Otomani-Füzesabony archaeological culture
In Transylvania, western Romania and eastern Hungary material conditions began
to improve ca. 1800 BC, and the area undoubtedly became more attractive. The
improvement was quite certainly tied to the beginning of a bronze industry. When
survivors prepared a body for the grave they could now afford a bronze pin with
which to fix the clothes or the shroud around the deceased, and the corpse might
also wear a bronze ring on a finger or a bronze pendant around the neck.^37 The
pottery placed in the grave also tended to be more interesting than it had been:
the pots are now regularly decorated, usually with a simple zigzag incision. These
and other improvements are labeled the beginning of the Otomani-Füzesabony
archaeological culture,^38 named after one type-site in western Romania and another
in eastern Hungary. What had begun with the Únĕtice culture in the Erzgebirge,
500 miles to the northwest and 300 years earlier, was finally—early in the second
millennium BC—reaching western Romania, although here was nothing so
spectacular as the chiefly burials found near the Erzgebirge.
Militarism in temperate Europe 139