Hungary - Population
Since the middle of the 1990s there has been an increase in the number of excavations, which has led to a greater understanding of settlement structures of that era. Based on this evidence we can estimate the overall settlement dimensions and the proportions of the house remains. In the ALPC period it would appear that the settlements consisted of 2 to 4 house rows, each consisting of 4 to 10 houses and covering an area of 2 to 4 hectares. Each house was occupied by a nuclear family of 4 to 6 members. The question remains, however, whether or not these houses were all occupied at the same time. This question is problematic because of the contradiction between archaeological data. Basically there are three possibilities:
(I) everything was occupied at the same time, or
(II) only the settelement rows were contemporaneous, or
(III) the houses were randomly built throughout the lifetime of the settlement.
The rectangle on the map shows the known sites in the region between the Laskó and Ostoros creeks. There is little evidence for establishing the settlement density and contemporanity within this region. Data resulting from surface examinations are scarce. This makes it difficult to gather a clear picture of the covered area. Settlement appears the densest along the N-S directed creekbanks running from foothills of the Bükk Mountain deep into the plains of the Alföld but so far only a few of these creeks were preliminarily examined. One of these is an ancient bed of the Laskó creek, located west from Füzesabony. This ancient creek bed is traceable for 5 km of its course and, following the examinations, has revealed 6 ALPC settlements. These settlements are situated at 300 to 1100 meter interval from each other. The Gubakút settlement is the largest.
Nowadays the Laskó runs at about 1.5 to 2 km distance from this creek bed, escorted also by some known sites of the ALPC. A further 2 to 3 km to the west run the Eger, Rima and Ostoros creeks, also accompanied by several ALPC sites. Although not every creek bank has yet been examined, it would appear that settlements are distributed all along them. Probably we are not far from the truth if we suppose that those sections not yet examined also will exhibit about the same site density as the examined ones. So we can estimate that within this 60 square kilometer section, there are 24 ALPC sites, all of which are located on creek banks.
According to the above hypotheses (I-III) the lifetime of an average site can be measured as ranging from 1-2, 2-4 or 2-6 house generations. The ALPC era can be put between 5500-5000 B.C. based on C14 dates and this 500-year periode represents approximately 10 house generations. Supposing that the settlement density remained fairly constant it derives, based on the above hypotheses (I-III), that 10-20, 20-40, or 20-60% of the settlements along the creek banks were contemporaneous. Due to the possibility that settlements also occurred in smaller numbers away from creek beds, this estimated number is probably a little lower than the reality.
In e.g. the average case (II), we can estimate 1-10 persons per square kilometer, which estimate is equivalent to the internationally accepted value relating to the productive capacity of the land in the new stone age, which was set at 2-5 persons.
There is little evidence relating to the ethnical and linguistic groups of the ALPC people. Anthropological studies of several ALPC skeletal remains have revealed three separate types, but these data are not sufficient enough to draw conclusions.
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Themes
Environment
Cultural context
Local resources
Settlements
Population
Material culture
Art
Funeral world
Religion
Social system
Trade/contacts
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