The myth of Mecsek malachite used in the Late Neolithic Carpathian Basin– the provenance of Late Neolithic malachite and copper artefacts from South-eastern Transdanubia

In the second half of the Late Neolithic (4700 − 4500 cal BCE), the first malachite and copper artefacts appeared in large quantities in the territory of present-day Hungary. They are known only as grave goods such as beads, rings and bracelets. Copper artefacts are concentrated in South-eastern Transdanubia, and archaeological literature has argued that this copper wealth may have been due to the exploitation of local malachite resources in the Mecsek Mountains. In our study, we compared lead isotope and chemical composition measurements of Mecsek malachite sources, Late Neolithic malachite and copper artefacts, and other potential ore sources to investigate the provenance of the raw material of these artefacts. The results of our analysis clearly exclude the exploitation of local, Mecsek sources. The malachite and copper artefacts found in the same grave may have come from the same source in the majority of the cases. This suggests that a set of ornaments was made using either technology. Among the potential sources, several mining regions emerged, primarily in the territory of present-day Bulgaria. A group of copper artefacts with high purity, common in contemporaneous Balkan sites, may come from a single source, which remains unknown. A smaller group of artefacts might be derived from the Bihor region. These results can be interpreted as a long-distance prestige exchange network, in which a composite set of ornaments were circulated in long distances and the source areas of the raw materials and the sites where they were finally deposited were not certainly directly linked.