Patterns of social practices and activities in the early ALPC settlement of Bükkábrány-Bánya VII (Northeast-Hungary)

Abstract

Bükkábrány-Bánya VII, an early ALPC settlement in Northeast Hungary, was just recently exposed to international research, but we would like to illustrate in our study how much promise its archaeological material has. We focused our investigation on these finds because the site contains a three-hectare excavated area and a welldefined settlement structure. Our first results are based on a quantitative examination of the many categories of archaeological finds. The first stage in our intra-site investigation involved the analysis of artifact fragmentation, as evaluated by the weight-to-frequency ratio, which indicated variances in depositional procedures. The spatial distribution of each find category was analyzed using kernel density, which revealed unique hot spots within activity zones. To split the settlement territory into spatial units, we employed the primary structural characteristics, such as rows of houses, empty spaces, and wells. The distribution and fragmentation data matched our theoretical spatial units well, providing an interpretive framework for the early ALPC settlement’s social units.