Bodrogkeresztur

The site of a Middle Copper Age cemetery and culture in eastern Hungary, c 3900-3500 BC. It is the type site for an occupation that made Linear Pottery and used metal battle-axes and ax-adzes of shaft-hole type. The cemetery has at least fifty inhumation graves. The Bodrogkeresztur culture represents the first peak of metallurgical development in Hungarian prehistory, defined by large-scale production of gold ornaments and heavy shaft-hole copper tools. The occurrence of Transylvanian gold, Slovakian copper, and flint from Poland suggests long-distance exchanges.

The eponymous site of the Middle Copper Age culture of eastern Hungary comprises a Linear pottery domestic occupation stratified below a medium-sized Copper Age inhumation cemetery. The Bodrogkeresztur culture represents the first peak of metallurgical development in Hungarian prehistory, defined by large-scale production of gold ornaments and heavy shaft-hole copper tools (axes, adzes and hammer-axes). The principal landscape feature was the nucleated cemetery which served dispersed hamlets. Longdistance exchange is witnessed by the occurrence in the Pannonian Basin of Transylvanian gold, Slovakian copper and flint from Poland and the Dniester valley.