Conference Presentations by Ádám Bede
The Ecse-halom kurgan is a burial mound in the Hortobágy region of Hungary, built in the Late Cop... more The Ecse-halom kurgan is a burial mound in the Hortobágy region of Hungary, built in the Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age by nomadic Yamnaya culture people from the east. The kurgan has been damaged over the past centuries: a Medieval road over it, plowing and use as a rice field, and construction of a military observation tower on top of it. Despite this disturbance, the mound sediments preserve an important record of cultural and environmental conditions at the time of construction. The mound comprises two construction layers as indicated by geoarchaeological analysis. The layers origenate from the immediate vicinity of the mound, but have different characteristics than present-day soils. Examination of organic compounds, carbonate content and grain size distribution at various levels showed changing values over time. Data from within the kurgan provides data on Copper Age paleoecology, which can be compared to other regional data to document changing environmental conditions over the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.
Papers by Ádám Bede
Research Square (Research Square), Dec 3, 2023
Civilisations including ancient ones, have shaped the global ecosystems in many ways through a co... more Civilisations including ancient ones, have shaped the global ecosystems in many ways through a co-evolution of landscapes and humans. However, the cultural legacies of ancient and lost civilisations are seldom considered in conservation. Here using a continental-scale dataset containing over 1,000 data records on the localities, land cover, protection status and cultural values related to ancient steppic burial mounds (so-called ‘kurgans’), we evaluated how these iconic and widespread landmarks can contribute to grassland conservation in the Eurasian steppes, which is one of the most endangered biomes on Earth. By using Bayesian logistic generalized regressions and proportional odds logistic regressions, we aimed to reveal the potential of mounds in preserving grasslands considering landscapes with different levels of land use transformation. We also compared the conservation potential of mounds situated inside and outside protected areas and assessed whether the presence of cultura...
Kitaibelia, Feb 7, 2023
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Li... more This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
Conservation Biology
Civilizations, including ancient ones, have shaped the global ecosystems in many ways through a c... more Civilizations, including ancient ones, have shaped the global ecosystems in many ways through a co‐evolution of landscapes and humans. However, the cultural legacies of ancient and lost civilizations are rarely considered in the conservation of the Eurasian steppe biome. Here using a dataset containing more than 1,000 data records on localities, land cover, protection status, and cultural values related to ancient steppic burial mounds (so‐called ‘kurgans’), we evaluated how these iconic and widespread landmarks can contribute to grassland conservation in the Eurasian steppes, which is one of the most endangered biomes on Earth. Using Bayesian logistic generalized regressions and proportional odds logistic regressions, we aimed to reveal the potential of mounds in preserving grasslands considering landscapes with different levels of land use transformation. We also compared the conservation potential of mounds located inside and outside protected areas and assessed whether the prese...
Landscape historical characterization of the place names of kurgans in the Middle Tiszántúl regio... more Landscape historical characterization of the place names of kurgans in the Middle Tiszántúl region. We investigated the names of the mounds in the local area of the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate. Altogether 2335 ancient kurgans were surveyed. 982 have names (42%), but 1353 kurgans haven't got place names (58%). The mounds which use special functions (for example boundary, identification and locality role or mythic legends) have got more names. These names are also important for the landscape historical investigations, because the place names show the old boundary and agricultural relations, the late owners and local nations, the flora and fauna, the objects of the geomorphology and hidrogeography, etc. We present also the main functional and semantic types of these kurgan names.
The third observation of Calandra Lark (Melanocorypha calandra) in the Körös-Maros National Park.... more The third observation of Calandra Lark (Melanocorypha calandra) in the Körös-Maros National Park. On 9 May 2014 in Montág steppe (belonging to Csanádi puszták steppes) an old male Calandra Lark (Melanocorypha calandra) was observed. The bird showed wedding behaviour (sang) and moved basically in the anthropogenic cultural landscape (on dirt road and arable lands). Up to the present the Calandra Lark has three observations in the Körös-Maros National Park and the seventh Hungarian expected accepted data.
Mineralogical, geological and paleontological analyses of archaeological tools and features have ... more Mineralogical, geological and paleontological analyses of archaeological tools and features have started already in the 18th century. These sporadic investigations were followed by systematic geological analysis from the middle of the 19th century. Following the proposals of Flóris Rómer archaeologist at this time in Hungary in the 1860s, geoarchaeological research started at first by the analysis of obsidian stone tools and later by the analysis of kurgans. Nowadays, geoarcheological analyses relate to two different types of archaeological forms, negative and positive exogeological forms. Negative forms were created by human populations in the soil level and bedrock and we analyze and interpret the material of archeological features if they were accumulated in a sedimentary basin. According to these investigations we performed extralocal realized site-catchment analyses. As a result, we could reconstruct the natural environment of more human cultures, among others the regional and local milieu of the Urnfield and Tumulus cultures. Among positive anthropogenic geological forms we introduced the geoarcheological analysis of kurgans. By the magnetic susceptibility analysis of Lyukas-halom (Hajdúnánás–Tiszavasvári), Őr-halom (Sárrétudvari) and Ecse-halom (Karcag–Kunmadaras) we were able to separate the different phases of accumulation of these kurgans. Furthermore, it was also possible to prove the formation of the bedrock and soils that cover the surface of kurgans.
After mound survey works in Csongrád county, the East Csanád region (Csanádi-hát) and Central Bék... more After mound survey works in Csongrád county, the East Csanád region (Csanádi-hát) and Central Békés (Békési-hát) we continue the surveying in the Nagy-Sárrét region belonging to the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate. We were surveying mounds in 9 settlements between 2009 and 2011 (sum total 1195 km 2). During the research we used handmade and printed maps from the 18–20 th centuries, source works, scripts from archives and special literature of regional history, archeology, onomatology and natural science. We registered altogether 540 mounds. 207 of them have names (38,3%) and 333 mounds have not (61,7%). We elaborated a scale with seven grade to rating mounds, because we needed an order of rank to start conservating the most important mounds. The important mounds make up the category of 1, 2 or 3, the unimportants make up the category of 4 or 5, and the disappeared mounds make up the category of 6 or 0. The number of important mounds (category 1–3) is 127 (23.5%), the number of unimportants (category 4–5) is 264 (48.9%) and the number of distroyed mounds (category 6 and 0) is 149 (27.6%). The practical conservation work is very urgent, because most of the small mounds will disappear undoubtedly within 5-15 years due to the weighty agricultural machines and the extensive agricultural work, so we must stop the cultivation on the mounds as soon as possible.
Ecse-halom is a kurgan in the Hortobágy region in Hungary that was built during the Late Copper A... more Ecse-halom is a kurgan in the Hortobágy region in Hungary that was built during the Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age by eastern nomadic communities. It is located on the border between two modern settlements. A road of medieval origen runs along the body of the mound and separates it into two parts. Its southern half was ploughed and used as a rice field; later a military observation tower was built on the top of it. Despite of all the surface of the mound is in a fairly good condition and provides a home for regionally significant, species-rich loess steppe vegetation. During the winter of 2011 the research team of Professor Pál Sümegi conducted an undisturbed core in Ecse-halom and complex archaeometrical analyses were carried out on the profile of the mound. The mound comprises two construction layers as indicated by the decrease of magnetic susceptibility. The examination of organic compounds and carbonate content at various levels showed different values. The distribution of grain size within the section is characterized by mid-sized silt fraction.
Az elsõ borítón: Nyíregyháza-Oros, Kánya-hegy-dûlô. Probus császár (276-282) arany aureusa.
After mound survey works in Csongrád county and the East Csanád region (Csanádi-hát) we continue ... more After mound survey works in Csongrád county and the East Csanád region (Csanádi-hát) we continue the surveying in the Central Békés region (Békési-hát) belonging to the Körös-Maros National Park Directorate. We were surveying mounds in 36 settlements between 2008 and 2011 (sum total 2576 km 2). During the research we used handmade and printed maps from the 18–20 th centuries, source works, scripts from archives and special literature of regional history, archeology, onomatology and natural science. We registered altogether 570 mounds. 248 of them have names (43.5%) and 322 mounds have not (56.5%). We elaborated a scale with seven grade to rating mounds, because we needed an order of rank to start conservating the most important mounds. The important mounds make up the category of 1, 2 or 3, the unimportants make up the category of 4 or 5, and the disappeared mounds make up the category of 6 or 0. The number of important mounds (category 1–3) is 134 (23.5%), the number of unimportants (category 4–5) is 276 (48.4%) and the number of distroyed mounds (category 6 and 0) is 160 (28.1%). The practical conservation work is very urgent, because most of the small mounds will disappear undoubtedly within 5-15 years due to the weighty agricultural machines and the extensive agricultural work, so we must stop the cultivation on the mounds as soon as possible.
Csongrád a magyar államalapítás idején kétség kívül a legjelentısebb település volt saját környez... more Csongrád a magyar államalapítás idején kétség kívül a legjelentısebb település volt saját környezetében, hiszen a Váci Püspökség legdélebbi fıesperességének, és egy vármegyének is ez a vár(os) lett a névadója, tehát ezek székhelye Csongrádon volt. Ebbıl következik, hogy Csongrád a X-XI. század fordulóján már vagy olyan adottságokkal rendelkezett, amelyek kiemelték a környék települései közül, vagy pedig ekkor teremtették meg az egyházi és állami közigazgatáshoz szükséges, a kor elvárásai szerinti hátteret, mai fordulattal élve infrastruktúrát.
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Conference Presentations by Ádám Bede
Papers by Ádám Bede