摘要：The village Mačkovac is situated on the left, Croatian bank of the Sava River, approximately 15 km south of Nova Gradiška. It was first mentioned in the literature already at the end of the 19th century, parallel to a hoard of bronze artifacts found at the Klupko site (Ilić-Oriovčanin, 1874; Ljubić, 1889). This was the first in a series of hoards found in the neighboring area. It was published in 1973 (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 73), along with the hoard from the neighboring village Siče (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 95). The third hoard from this area, from Dolina on the Sava, was published by Schauer in 1974. The locality is situated 1 km north of the village, on a site called Crišnjevi, 92 m above sea level, thus topping a floodplain at 90 m above sea level. It covers approximately 2 hectares of land. On its southern side it is defined by the natural depression called Prišnjica, in which water accumulates throughout most of the year, making access to the settlement difficult. In the surrounding area there are a few other sites with Late Bronze Age pottery. In the vicinity there are two more sites, Glavičica with tumuli, and the Late Bronze Age settlement Babine Grede. In 1985 another hoard was uncovered on Crišnjevi (Karavanić and Mihaljević, 2001), which brought about trial excavations in 1997. Its interesting results contributed to the continuation of excavations. Up to the present day, 323 m2 have been investigated. Over the years many pottery objects, animal remains, a human tooth (verbal communication by M. Šlaus) and several bronze objects were unearthed. Three layers can be distinguished at the site. The surface layer consists of humus damaged by plowing, with pottery and daub finds. Beneath this comes a dark brown, almost black clay layer with plenty of daub, pottery and charcoal, representing a cultural deposit settled in the area outside or above the settlement facilities. On the bottom there is a layer with many animal bones and coal. On Crišnjevi no remains of above-ground houses were uncovered, but only of smaller furnaces. One furnace has a regular oval ground plan, with two layers of a 20 cm thick clay coat, whereas others were made of a substruction of pottery fragments and a 2-3 cm thick clay coat. Above the furnace with the thicker coat there was an implosion made of daub fragments and parts of furnace. In the implosion a bronze ingot and a bellows nozzle (T. 2, 14) were found, and in the vicinity dross fragments as well, indicating metallurgical activity in this part of the settlement. In 2000 and 2001, a 15 cm thick stratum of hard, packed clay was unearthed above the bottom layer, on which there was a furnace (Fig. 2), as well as numerous heaps of pottery and daub fragments. The earth in this stratum was obviously leveled in order to create a surface for specific economic activities in the settlement; thus it might have been a house surface, within which there were smaller fireplaces and furnaces. In it only a limited number of finds was unearthed, only a few pottery and daub fragments. Considering the excavated surface, a relatively large number of metal objects was unearthed in Mačkovac. Those were mostly bronze needles. Thus regular sewing needles were found, as well as two needles with a biconical head (Vrdoljak, Mihaljević, 2000, Fig. 2, 1-6). Needles with a simple biconical head as well as those with a rounded head are simple, long-lasting utensils. Apart from a few exceptions, these needles cannot be used for accurate dating. In Moravia they were dated in early Urnfield culture, and in Hungary, in the hoards Romand and Velemszentvid, in late Urnfield culture. The needle (T. 4, 5) would correspond to the Deinsdorf type (Říhovský, 1979; Innerhofer 2000). Most similar to the needle from Mačkovac is that from grave-mound I, from a skeletal grave at the Velke Hosteradky site (Říhovský, 1963, 66, T. 1,; B6). Similar needles were also found in the Polešovice hoard in Moravia (Salaš, 1997, T. 23, 574-577), where they were dated in late grave-mound culture and early Urnfield culture (Salaš, 1997, 40). Needles of the same type were also found at other localities in northern Croatia, e.g. in Ilok (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, 180, T. 19, 1-2), Bogdanovci (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 19, 3), and Slavonski Brod (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T 19, 4). These needles, along with other finds, correspond with the group of finds representing the Middle Bronze Age basis for the development of Urnfield culture and are dated into the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. Apart from those needles, there is also a needle from the Virovitica site (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 10, 10) that represents the Middle Bronze Age needle type with a nailshaped head which Teržan used as an argument for dating the beginning of the Virovitica group in the period Br B2-C (Teržan, 1995, 327). The most numerous group of finds in Mačkovac is pottery. The paper gives a selection of finds from all these years. Pot types found in Mačkovac are distributed over a large territory and in different Urnfield culture groups. Mostly we are dealing with pots with a rounded body and an everted rim, of different sizes, with one or two ribboned grips beneath the rim. Often they are decorated with a horizontal rib or a plastic ribbon with finger-prints (T. 1, 7), sometimes combined with a vertical ribbon, which is connected with the rim. The same forms of pots are found in the settlement Oloris (Dular, 2002), in Laminci near Bosanska Gradiška (Čović, 1983, 65-70, T 1; Đurđević, 1987, 50) and Saghegy (Patek, 1968). Interesting are pots decorated by clustered applications at the bottom (T. 3, 4), which are also found at the Laminci locality (Čović, 1983, 65-70). Such applied ornaments also occur in Transdanubia at the Gelsesziget site within the gravemound culture (Laszlo, 1994, 226), as well as at the Urnfield culture necropolis Voers-Battyani (Honti, 1993, 152, 155). Bowls are represented with a much richer repertoire of forms. Several varieties of rounded bowls with a flat rim (B3a, B3b, B3e) and one with an everted, horizontally flattened rim (B3d) were out. They occur in the early Urnfield culture settlements of Oloris (Dular, 2002) and Saghegy (Patek, 1968), as well as at the necropoli of Barice (Čović, 1958) and Mala Brusnica (Belić, 1963-1964). The bowl variety of rough manufacturing, with thicker walls and a flat bottom with vertical, horn-shaped protrusions (B3c) (T. 3, 2) has no closer analogies. Řihovsky mentions them in his work as an element of the grave-mound culture which was conveyed into early Urnfield culture, the Blučina-Kopčany horizon (Říhovský, 1982, 17, 42). Patek dates them as early as Br C and defines them as a form conveyed from gravemound culture (Patek, 1968, 102, T. 1, T. 6). Bowls with a broadly ribboned rim (B6), a regular find on each necropolis of the Virovitica and Barice-Gređani groups, were also found in Mačkovac, and they appear in early Urnfield culture since Br C. Among them is also a fragment decorated with an oval knob in the interior (T. 3, 7). Deep bowls with a rounded (B5a) (T. 1, 1-2, 4-6; T. 4, 2, 4) or slightly biconical (B5b) (T. 1, 3; T. 4, 1, 3) belly account for more than a third of all bowls in Mačkovac and are the most remarkable vessels at the site. They were all reductionally baked, they may have one or two ribboned grips, the portion where the belly turns into the neck is accentuated by a shallow groove, and often their belly is decorated with oval, knob-shaped protrusions (German Buckel) surrounded by a groove. Similar bowls were found in the necropoli of the Barice-Gređani group (Minichreiter, 1982, T. 4, 6, 8, 15), the necropoli in the surroundings of Bjelovar (Majnarić-Pandžić, 1988, 18-23), in Virovitica and Sirova Katalena (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 8, 15), and Moravče near Sesvete (Sokol, 1996, Fig. 13, 14). Particularly interesting is the analogy of bowls from Vinkovci (Dimitrijević, 1979, 141) that opened a number of questions pertaining to their chronological and cultural position. It is a chance find, culturally determined already in 1966 (Dimitrijević, 1966, 68) as part of the Hatvanoid- Bebrin culture and dated into Br A2 and Br A3. The scientific literature leans on this opinion due to a lack of investigation (Dimitrijević, 1979; Čović, 1983), or refers to it as Brod culture (Petrović, 1970; Belić, 1968; Lozuk, 1993, 2000), persisting upon dating into the Early Bronze Age. Bosnian literature, after the excavation in Laminci, subscribes the earlier published finds to Urnfield culture (Čović, 1988; Đurđević, 1987). After having studied the materials preserved in the Brodsko Posavlje Museum and comparing them to all the published localities it can be concluded that we are dealing with pottery artifacts from a settlement which is notably related to those from the Mačkovac-Crišnjevi site and therefore chronologically classified as belonging to the end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, concurrent with the Virovitica group and culturally belonging to the Barice-Gređani group. The preliminary analysis of metal and ceramic finds dates the settlement into the latest phases of Middle Bronze Age and the very beginning of the Late Bronze Age or the Virovitica group. To conclude, the settlement lasted from stage Br BC until stage Br D with a few elements of Ha A. The principal economic activities were farming and livestock breeding with occasional fishery, and there are also testimonies to metallurgic activity that took place near the furnaces. At present we cannot estimate how many inhabitants the settlement had since only a small area has been excavated, but it can be assumed that it was a smaller village community.
