In Hungarian prehistoric terminology, Baden is a Copper Age cultural complex with roughly 2000 sites, which incorporates the Boleráz, the classical Baden, the Kostolác and the Vu?edol cultures on the territory of Hungary. Complementing this picture of the period’s archaeological cultures is the Pit Grave population, an intrusive nomadic culture forming smaller enclaves in the Baden distribution, in some cases separate from and in some cases overlapping with the Baden sites on the Great Hungarian Plain.
In the wake of the large-scale salvage excavations of the 1990s, we now have more abundant information about the period’s settlements. Additionally, two of the most important cemeteries of the Boleráz and Baden cultures have been finally published, many decades after their excavation.
The currently largest excavated, evaluated and published settlement with a Boleráz and a Baden occupation is Balaton?szöd, which I excavated in 2001-2002. In the first part of the presentation, I will review the evidence that led to a new picture of the relation between Boleráz and Baden.
During my Austrian research project, my main focus was a comparison between Austria and Hungary in the Late Copper Age, with regard to the Baden complex. In the second part of the presentation, I will describe in brief the preliminary findings of my re-assessment of the find assemblages from old excavations in the broader area of Ózd and Salgótarján, alongside an overview of a few new sites with a special nature in various areas of Hungary.