The deer tooth necklace from grave 12 at Bodrogzsadány

Abstract

Csanad Balint and the Archaeological Institute are virtually inseparable in my life: in 1982, he was the first to ask me what I would most like to do if my job were not inventorying finds from various excavations. I told him that I would best like to study the Late Neolithic of the Tisza region. This was a wholly unrealistic dream at the time: even after I was assigned to do archaeological work, I was sent off to a micro-regional research project in Transdanubia, where I had the opportunity to excavate major sites from the Early Neolithic to the Middle Copper Age. Any work on the Late Neolithic of the Tisza region remained an unfulfilled dream for a long time, until around 2000 Ida Bognar-Kutzian asked me to participate in the publication of her still unpublished Neolithic and Copper Age find assemblages. The first volume, containing a description and evaluation of the 1957 season at Polgar–Csőszhalom, appeared in 2007, too late for Ida to see it. The grave goods from the few burials uncovered at Bodrogzsadany–Akasztoszer in 1958, another of Ida’s excavations have much in common with the finds from the graves of the Csőszhalom site. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the necklace strung of red deer canines from Grave 12 at Bodrogzsadany immediately caught my attention. Although not a particularly common find in the Late Neolithic of the Upper Tisza region, there is ample evidence for deer canines fashioned into jewellery items. This study is dedicated to Cs. Balint, my dear colleague in the Archaeological Institute for over a quarter of a century.