Transformations in the Carpathian Basin around 1600 B.C

In book: 1600 – Cultural change in the shadow of the Thera-Eruption? 4th Archaeological Conference of Central Germany. October 14–16, 2011 in Halle (Saale). — Halle (Saale), 2013. — pp. 355-371.Around the time of the Thera eruption important transformations occurred in the Carpathian Basin. This is the so-called Koszider Period, which corresponds to the last phase of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) in the Hungarian terminology and represents a transition to the Late Bronze Age. The assessment of the period has been controversial among both Hungarian and central European scholars. In the past few years this period has been interpreted not as a short "horizon" connected to a specific historical event, but as a longer period that represented the heyday of the MBA in the Carpathian Basin, which ended with significant transformations. The main elements of this transformation, however, are still unclear. Our aim is to investigate this transformation through the comparison of several aspects of three subsequent phases and to amend the previously offered interpretations of the changes with a few new considerations.