This study explores and demonstrates processes of cultural change in the first half of the 6th millennium cal BC, among the Koeroes and Starcevo groups of the northern marginal zones of the Balkans. Within this period and zone, which forms the southern part of the Carpathian basin, clay was the fundamental and most abundant building block of material culture, architecture, everyday life and cult practices. Clay walls, furniture, ten thousands of vessels, hundreds of clay figurines and other cult objects accumulated as huge piles of clay debris in every settlement. Traditional system of subsistence patterns ceased to fully function when these first farmers occupied cool and wet hilly forested landscapes: the environmental and cognitive challenges gradually led to the decline of this clay-centred orbit. At the same time, these changes gave birth to a no-less stunning world constructed more of timber and stones, with transformations in subsistence, material culture and rituals. This transition is inextricably bound up with the formation of the first farmers' communities of Central Europe, the Bandkeramik (LBK). The need for new elements of subsistence involved the increasing significance of cattle over caprinae: this shift infiltrated into ritual activities. The newly identified large horned cattle figurine type, acting as the cornerstone of this study, is an embodiment of the last instance among the South-East european communities of the clay world, while changes in the depictions already reflect the transformation of lifestyles. The role of cattle and their monumental depictions, found in domestic contexts, define methods for unfolding this phenomenon. In this fascinating new study, Eszter Banffy takes a holistic approach to the definition of monumental early Neolithic clay figurines, analogies over South-east Europe, and the reconstruction of rituals involved in the making and using figurines. She reviews a broad scope of environmental and (social) zooarchaeological analyses to examine the concomitant development and significance of early dairying. The target is to present one possible narrative on the fading of the South-east European 'clayscapes', towards the birth of the LBK and the Central European Neolithic.

The growing interest in the cultural dimensions and environmental aspects of the transition to the Neolithic in the 6th millennium BC calls for a brief overview of what we know about the Early Neolithic in the Danube-Tisza interfluve. The idea of a volume drawing together the various strands of evidence on the Early Neolithic in this region resulted in the multi-facetted analysis presented in this volume. One major advance emanating from the study was the elimination of the archaeological blank spot between the Alfold and Transdanubia - earlier, the very existence of this blank spot made any discussion of possible contact between the two thoroughly researched regions virtually impossible and hampered comparisons of any kind."

In 1957, preliminary investigations revealed a major Late Neolithic settlement mound, which also happened to be the northernmost tell settlement on the Great Hungarian Plain. Although the trial was limited to a small trench, the several meters thick deposits yielded exciting finds and several richly furnished burials. The brief preliminary report and the various references to the excavation made it quite obvious that the tell was one of the key sites of the Hungarian Neolithic and thus the full publication of the tell and its finds was, quite understandably, eagerly awaited by prehistorians. Investigations resumed in 1989 as part of the excavations preceding the construction of the M3 motorway. This excavation was preceded by various geophysical surveys and palaeoenvironmental sampling in order to reconstruct the settlement's one-time environment and to determine the exact date of its occupation. However, until the results of the new excavation are published in detail, this monograph will be the single available study on the Polgar-Csoszhalom site, the eponymous site of a Late Neolithic culture."

As regards an artistic object, e.g. a sculpture of the ancient world of unknown provenance, it is a usual practice to study its possible context, historic and sometimes also religious background. But is it correct to do the same with an artefact of an earlier age, a prehistoric figurine?The author devotes the present study to a meticulous analysis of a stray find, bought from a collection in Egypt and now deposited in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. The main goal certainly was to collect as much information as possible about the time and place of its birth, about the (pre)historic context within which the figurine may have been used. The result reveals fairly much about the periphery of the late 3rd millennium Mesopotamia, about groups of peoples who traded and thus came into cultural contact with Egypt, but also with coeval Transcaucasian cultures. An attempt for a reconstruction of early religious koine of the Syro-Palestinian region, concerning Goddesses, was also possible. Beyondthat, the book is also of methodological value, giving an example for studying contextless archaeological objects, which, unfortunately, according to the proliferating trade in antique objects of art, grow in number.