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Site version description:
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The village of Bükkábrány is located in Hungary, in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, alongside Highway No. 3, near the municipalities of Vatta, Csincse and Mezőkeresztes. Extensive lignite fields consisting of several million tons of lignite were identified in the area in the 1960s. The surface mine at Bükkábrány has been operational since 1985, supplying the powerplant at Visonta and sold to local households as briquettes. It is the smaller of the two surface mines of the Mátra Powerplant Ltd. During the strip mining process, overburden is removed from lignite layers, and the remaning waste is used to fill back extracted areas of the mine. After lignite is extracted completely from a strip, the mine progresses onwards, filling the now empty regions. The Herman Ottó Museum at Miskolc has been conducting preemptive archaeological research on the area of the mine of Bükkábrány since 2007 and not one year has passed without archaeological fieldwork. In 2011 the surface mine approached the former course of Csincse Creek, leading to the archaeological mapping of a relatively small and well-defined region. In April 2011, Klára P. Fischl conducted a fieldwalk on the site with help from the students of the University of Miskolc, and identified a 25.56 hectares large archaeological site, which was entitled „Bükkábrány-Bánya Site No. XI”. The earliest fieldwalks have already confirmed traces of intense settlement from several archaeological epochs. The site is located atop the flood-free bank that borders the Csincse Creek from the west and rises 5–6 metres above its surroundings. Archaeological excavations were conducted between July 2012 and March 2014. The excavated area covered more than 130 000 square meters and contained approximately 3 700 features, including 3 Middle Neolithic settlements, 6 Early Chalcolithic graves of the Tiszapolgár culture, 2 Middle Chalcolithic cemeteries of the Bodrogkeresztúr culture, 2 separate Middle Chalcolithic settlements of the Hunyadihalom culture, 1 Late Iron age Celtic settlement, at least 3 separate Sarmatian settlements from the Roman Imperial period and 2 Sarmatian settlements. Excavations were also conducted on two distinct segments of the Csörsz Trench.
The present site version includes Sarmatian graves from the archaeological worksite entitled „XI/A”, which encompassed the southern part of the site. The site included 1 large Middle Neolithic settlement of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture (Hungarian: AVK) and 1 large Sarmatian settlement, including a partially survived forge and a small cemetery of 27 graves. The Sarmatian graves were situated atop a sandy mound, located in the NW corner of the worksite, approximately 500 metres south of the Csörsz Trench. Several N–S oriented survey trenches were made outside the graveyard, yet no further burials were discovered. It seems that the borders of the Sarmatian cemetery were quite clear, and no unexcavated graves are to be expected in its vicinity.
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