Stamped pottery from the settlements of the Przeworsk culture in Hungary: A critical look at the “Bereg culture”

Abstract

The mountain river valleys in the Upper Tisza region were settled by communities of the Przeworsk culture in the 2nd–4th centuries AD, a population generally identified with the Vandals arriving from Poland. Aside from the locally made hand-thrown fine and coarse wares, the pottery from their settlements also includes types made on a fast wheel from the later 2nd century onward. A part of the wheel-turned vessels produced on specialised potters’ settlements and in rural workshops was decorated with stamped designs inspired by the Roman provincial pottery of Porolissum. The sites yielding pottery labelled Beregsurány or Blažice type after their known workshop sites in the Barbaricum are often lumped together as representing the “Bereg culture”. Described and discussed here are the stamped pottery fragments from ten, largely unpublished settlements of the Przeworsk culture in Hungary. The principal conclusion offered by this material is that the region had much closer contacts with the Zilah area and the Slovakian section of the River Hernád in the foreland of the Dacian limes – at least regarding stamped pottery – than with the pottery wares produced on the Szatmár and Bereg Plains.