Neolithic Archaeology

There is a lot going on! We currently have six different teams working in the field, and our number has swelled to over thirty. The dinner table has expanded considerably!

Last Friday, the entire team headed up to Budapest, where Attila presented a paper about the project. The conference was a great opportunity to meet with archaeologists from all over southeastern Europe who specialize in the Neolithic and Copper Age. Our paper was very well received, and it was helpful to exchange ideas with other people who focus on the region.

After two years of searching, we've finally found the trench from Kornél Bakay’s excavations on the Szeghalom-Kovácshalom tell! This trench, which was excavated in 1969, is key in helping us understand how the entire settlement grew from its founding in the Middle Neolithic period to its explosion of growth and massive size in the Late Neolithic. With this discovery, we can finally start adding a temporal dimension to our work, which until now has focused primarily on defining the horizontal organization of the site.

The literal translation of my blog title means “We cut the whole thing right in half!” It's a Hungarian colloquialism that means “We nailed it!” or “We hit the ground running!," which is certainly true of our start during this year's expedition season. To give you the play-by-play, Rick Yerkes (Ohio State University) and I arrived Sunday afternoon. Attila Gyucha (Hungarian National Museum) met us at the airport with Paul Duffy (University of Toronto), who arrived a couple weeks ago to work on his own project, which focuses on the Bronze Age.