13
“In the Early Bronze Age of Hungary it was the standard rite in the cemeteries of Nagyrev and Kisapostag groups and in the Middle Bornze age in those of the Vatya group.(…) In Britain, cremation was widely practiced in the early Bronze Age and was dominant in north. During the course of the Middle Bronze Age it became the commonest rite in Britain. (…)The largest and most important cemetery of Middle bronze age in Central Europe at Pitten in Lower Austria had 221 excavated graves of which 74 were inhumations and 147 cremations.” A. F. Harding, European Societies in the Bronze Age p.
111-112
“In the Encrusted Ware Culture scattered cremations predominate; in the Vatya Culture urn burials are used; and in Füzesabony inhumation is the most common grave form. (…)The Encrusted Ware culture is found in the hilly regions of the western part of Hungary – Transdanubia – an area divided into a northern and southern part by Lake Balaton. Its distribution, primarily defined by its elaborate pottery tradition, stretches from the Danube all the way to the Drava, around the Balaton and the Sió. The Great Hungarian Plain, a terrain ranging from flat to rolling plains, is the main setting for the Vatya Culture, which is situated on both sides of the Danube in a densely settled and therefore well-researched area. The origins of the Vatya Culture are thought to be connected to the late Kisapostag settlements in north-east Transdanubia (Bóna 1975:32), from where it quickly spread southwards and across the Danube, (…)The landscape of the northeastern part of Hungary and south-east Slovakia, the setting for the Füzesabony Culture, is again quite different.” Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Landscapes of the Body: Burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary, p.
50-51
14 Although inhumation was the dominant rite, cremation burials also occur in the original homeland of the Tumulus culture, in Oberpfalz, southern Germany and Austria. It seems likely that the Tumulus population practiced both rites by the time it arrived to Hungary and that the original ratio of the two burial rites was also influenced by the funerary practices of the local population. CHANGES IN THE 3RD MILLENNIUM B.C.: THE DAWN OF A NEW PERIOD, p.
162
“Though the main feature of the burials are nearly identical everywhere, there are minor differences in the size and form of the graves, the wooden and especially stone construction, the number of burials in the Tumulus, which usually contained contracted but sometimes cremations.” Sigfried J. de Laet, From the Third Millennium to the Seventh Century B. C., p.
871
Likewise, inhumation remained a funerary rite practiced by some Urnfield cultures:
“Although this period is called Urnfield period, inhumation was not completely abandoned. The Knoviz group in Central Bohemia and Franconia for instance left many inhumation graves. Some Lusatian cemeteries in lower Warta and Oder basin continued inhumation during the Urnfield II and later phases.” Gimbutas, p.
309
15 “Central Europe, and in particular the Carpathian Basin, has often been claimed as the origin of the Urnfield Culture with its practice of cremation (Gedl 1991; Pfannenschmidt 2000), but the diversity of burial traditions within this area brings into doubt the idea that cremation, as aCentral Europe, and in particular new practice, has a single and simple point of origin. Furthermore, the variability of burial practices also undermines the expectation that the transition from inhumation
to cremation will be linear and follow a certain prescribed trajectory” Marie Louise Stig Sørensen and Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Landscapes of the Body: Burials of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary, p.
49-50
See also notes 1 and 12
16,
“Inhumation was the commoner mode of burial. (…) From the above it can be deduced that the transition from inhumation to cremation was a gradual process and that cremation seems to have supplanted inhumation somewhere at the end of the classical Otomani period.” Gimbutas, p.
214
“In the cemetery No.1 of Sarata Monteoru phase IIb cremated children graves in urns appeared. In all other Monteoru graves inhumation was universal. ”Gimbutas, p.
228
Recent studies of Dacian names in Romania have shown that they coincide with the distribution of the Monteoru culture. Gimbutas, p.
232
“The predominant funerary rite within Noua culture is inhumation (…) From a statistic viewpoint, incineration is rare in case of this culture, appearing in around 10-14% in Moldova, and especially during Noua I phase and rarer in the second phase.” CULTURA NOUA PE TERITORIUL ROMÂNIEI, P.
12
17.“ The grafting of the elements of civilization typical of the communities of
the northern-Pannonian inlayed ceramics with local ones (Gerjen, Vatina and Verbicioara) determined the appearance of a new ethnical-cultural manifestation known especially as „Szeremle group”, and recently as „Szeremle-Bjelo Brdo group”5 in the archaeological literature. (…) One of them was the Zuto Brdo -Gârla Mare culture, which developped from the Szeremle communities, that were coming down to the neighbouring of the western side of the Carpathians. The Szeremle cultural group is considered, in the same time, one of the elements that actively participated to the formation of the Cruceni-Belegiš culture. (…)The Cruceni-
Belegiš culture was formed on the basis of a mixture of elements of Litzenkeramik type belonging to the Gumtransdorf-Drassburg group and inlayed ceramics of Szeremle type, dislocated by the pressure of the communities of the Tumular Culture (Hügelgräberkultur) from Central
Europe. That mixture was grafted on the local background of Vatina type.(…) Beside
the tumular influences, we have to remind those that come from the rnfield area with which the Cruceni-Belegiš culture got contemporary.”Alexandru Szentmiklosi, THE RELATIONS OF THE CRUCENI-BELEGIŠ CULTURE WTH THE Zuto-Brdo–GÂRLA MARE CULTURE, p.
230-232