Gesta XVII/2 (2018), 3–8. 3 SETTLEMENT LAYOUTS, SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURE OF THE OTOMANI-FÜZESABONY CULTURAL COMPLEX Klára P. Fischl University of Miskolc, Departement of Archaeology fklari@gmail.com Kivonat 2018. június 7–9 között került sor Miskolcon a Settlement layouts, systems and structure of the Otomani-Füzesabony Cultural Complex (a továbbiakban OFCC) című nemzetközi konferencia megrendezésére. A konferencián az OFCC területét érintő öt ország kutatói mutatták be településkutatásaikat. A jelen kötet a konferencián elhangzott előadások egy részét tartalmazza. A bevezető tanulmány a konferencia és a kötet célját és felépítését járja körül. Kulcsszavak OFCC, miskolci konferencia, településkutatás Keywords Otomani-Füzesabony Cultural Complex, Conference at Miskolc, Settlement-researches Introduction The international conference, Settlement layouts, system and structure of the Otomani-Füzesabony Cultural Complex (further OFCC) took place in Miskolc between the 7 th and 9 th of June 2018 . This occasion was also a formal closing event for the research grant of The National Scholarship Programme of Slovak Republic with the titel: Bronze Age Settlement System of the Otomani- Füzesabony Ceramic Style across borders. A comparative study of Bronze Age societies in the Hernád Valley and beyond. The Host institution of the grant was the Institute of Archaeology, Slovak Academy of Sciences. Parallel to the conference the latest results from the years 2012–2018 of the BORBAS project (Borsod Plain Bronze Age Settlements) were also published: T. L. Kienlin, K. P. Fischl, T. Pusztai: Borsod Region Bronze Age Settlement (BORBAS) Catalogue of the Early to Middle Bronze Age Tell Sites Covered by Magnetometry and Surface Survey. Universitätsforschungen zur prähis- torischen Archäologie 317, Bonn 2018. In the light of the newest researches, which put our knowledge about the OFCC settlements into a new context, organisation of an international conference was reasonable. In addition many other aims and reasons motivated the organisation of the conference. OFCC research has always been the red-headed stepchild in the history of archaeology. This large cultural block stretches from Lesser Poland to the rivers Hernád and Tisza, and even to the river Maros via the Tisza’s right bank creeks, in the Eastern half of the Carpathian Basin namely across the territories of five present day nations. Research history The first summaries of ceramics with spiral knobs and helicoidal ribs (also known as turbanrand) decorations were named Otomani- (Romania, Nestor 1933), Hornopotiska- (Slovakia, Eisner 1933) and Füzesabony-Culture (Hungary, Tompa 1937) respectively. While Hungarian and Romanian research still clings to their own naming conventions to this day, Slovakians eventually adopted the use of the Otomani term (for further research history see Bader 1998, Thomas 2008). Even though the Hornopotiska Culture, which refers to the culture of the upper regions around the river Tisza, did not cover the entire range of the area, it still could have resolved the argument that has been dragged on for nearly half a century with its geographically focused approach; alas, it quickly went out of use. In addition to the insistence on national nomenclature, the fact that the first monography-like descriptions were made using Childe’s definition of culture (Childe 1929) also makes the debate difficult to this day, since they categorized these prehistoric cultures based on the shapes and decorative motifs of their ceramics (Popescu 1944; Bóna 1975; Furmánek et al. 1999). The dubiousness of assessing these two “cultures” is reflected by the word choice in Bóna’ s monography, which was written in 1958 but only published in 1975, where he discusses