The Mesolithic Research of a Decade: Early Holocene Settlements in Transdanubia

Abstract

Despite the promising research trends of the last decades, it is striking that traces of Mesolithic settlements have only rarely come to light in the Carpathian Basin so far. The area of Transdanubia is not an exception. With the cooperation of three institutes, a research program was launched in 2003 with the aim of discovering new find places of the period, as well as re-evaluating finds that had been taken to museums earlier and classified as Mesolithic. The field surveys revealed Early Holocene sites in the South-East Transdanubian region in the valley of the Kapos and Koppány Rivers, mainly in the outskirts of Kaposhomok and Regöly. The sites mainly came to light on the island-like reliefs elevating only a few meters from the present-day floodplain. The dating of the surface finds, especially chipped stone artefacts, was primarily based on the geometric microliths, which contain asymmetric triangles, segments, and trapezes. We could even reveal Mesolithic finds within stratigraphic position at the site of Regöly 2, where the remains of a domestic structure also came to light.