Metallurgy of the Vatya Culture — Technological Observations on the Stone Tools of the Culture Tünde Horváth, Budapest 1 Introduction Several publications have touched or fo- cused on the metallurgy of the Middle Bronze Age Vatya culture (HAMPEL 1886–1896; WOSINSKY 1896; BÓNA 1958; 1975, 273–298; 1994a, 24–26, 32–39, 48–54; MOZSOLICS 1957; 1967; 1988; KOVÁCS 1975; 1977; 1984a, 217–233; 2000; BÁNDI 1966; HÄNSEL 1968; PETRES /BÁNDI 1969; TROGMAYER 1966–1967; VALKÓ 1941; LE BEL AGE DU BRONZE 1994; A BRONZKOR KINCSEI MAGYARORSZÁGON 1995; DAVID 2002). Numerous phenomena and finds linked with metallurgy are known from the territory of the culture but they have never been studied in their contexts. The objectives of my doctoral disserta- tion were the collection and evaluation of stone tools from the settlements of the Vatya culture including stone moulds and the description and analysis of other finds that could be associated with metallurgy. 2 This study is the concise version of the chapter of the dissertation on metallurgy, in which the metallurgy of the culture is re- constructed through the publication of old excavation materials, the recent results and a reversed approach — from the tools of production instead of metals. In the follow- ings I will analyse the settlement phenomena linked with the metallurgy of the culture, the problem of workshops, finds linked with them and the connections between them, the manufacturing technol- ogy (bronze/gold), scientific analyses of metals and the problems of origin and dat- ing. Regrettably, little is known of work- shops, working processes and the metal- lurgists: we have too few data. Moulds, clay tuyeres, casting ladles, various stone tools and the metal objects themselves found in settlements (mostly in a damaged condi- tion and so recovered from features re- garded to have been refuse pits or rarely as they had been left where they had been used) indicate metallurgical workshops. It is generally accepted that workshops must be supposed where 3 the above listed object types can be found in larger numbers. Thus, in the Vatya culture, the existence of activities satisfying local demands can be supposed at Dunaújváros–Kosziderpadlás (BÓNA 1958; 1994a; 1994b), Százhalom- batta–Földvár (POROSZLAI 1993; 1998; 2000a; KOVÁCS 2000), Bölcske–Vörösgyír (WOSINSKY 1896, 395–396; POROSZLAI M. Jaeger/J. Czebreszuk/K.P. Fischl (eds.) Enclosed Space — Open Society. Contact and Exchange in the Context of Bronze Age Fortified Settlements in Central Europe. SAO/SPEŚ 9. Poznań–Bonn 2012. 53 1 Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Acad- emy of Sciences, H–1014, Úri u. 49. E–mail: valde- mar@archeo.mta.hu 2 In Hungarian: HORVÁTH 2004a; 2004b, volume I, chapter, VI under the title A vatyai kultúra metallur- giája a kõeszközök tükrében [The metallurgy of the Vatya culture as reflected in stone tools]. Anna Farkas-Petõ made the petrographic determina- tions for which we are grateful. The whole disser- tation is available on the site www.archeo.mta.hu/ staff/Tünde Horváth, Ph.D, in a pdf–format. 3 I find it important to emphasise that the concept of „workshop” is problematic in the examined period since nearly all the Middle Bronze Age settlements match the determination of a workshop according to the above listed criteria — this, however, does not reflect the reality. We know real workshops from the Late Bronze Age, which were mass-pro- ducing, specialised, distributive workshop centres like Velem Szent–Vid, Celldömölk–Sághegy, Regöly: KEMENCZEI 2003. Although in the Vatya culture the traces of metallurgy are strongly linked with the central settlements and the demands of the population who lived there, metallurgy did not reach the level of the Late Bronze Age workshops. Thus in the Middle Bronze Age, the finds and the phenomena linked with metallurgy can be associ- ated with goldsmiths/blacksmiths who practiced their trade inside the settlements and who met the seasonal or permanent minor demands of the local aristocracy. Comp. the sites in Fig. 1.