Drilled dog canine ornaments from a special Late Copper Age grave

Abstract

Grave 367 of the Balatonlelle-Rádpuszta site 67/5 cemetery dating from the classical period of the Baden culture contained the burial of an adult woman interred according to an unusual rite involving the placement of a child’s skull under the head. The sole grave goods from this burial were three and ten fragmented drilled dog canines. Roughly one-half of the canines lay by the feet of the deceased. The worn surface of the canines and the damaged perforations indicate that they had been worn for a long time, while their position in the grave would suggest that some had once adorned the lower part or hemline of a longer garment. The Hungarian and Central European analogies dating from a few centuries later raise the possibility that woman laid to rest at Balatonlelle as well as the dogs providing the canines used for the adornment, a wholly unique practice in the Carpathian Basin during the fourth millennium BC, were not of local, but of eastern origin.