Őskori környezeti hatások, változások és a magasártér felszínfejlődése egy többkorszakú Duna-parti lelőhelyen (Budapest I. kerület, Fő utca 2.)

The Budapest History Museum conducted excavations under 2 Fő Street in Budapest, a plot between the Buda Castle Hill and the Danube, at the northwestern corner of Clark Ádám Square. Following a campaign by Judit Benda in 2013, Farkas Márton Tóth and his team excavated the rest of the layers in 2016. István Viczián and his colleagues reconstructed the landscape evolution of the area. The site lies at the foot of Castle Hill’s eastern slope, on top of an elevation emerging from the Danube’s floodplain. Although Neolithic and Late Copper Age finds have also been found, the area was permanently inhabited only in the second halves of the Early (EBA) and Middle Bronze Ages (MBA), respectively, and the Late Iron Age (La Tène D phase). It was used as a cemetery during the Roman Period, while in the Middle Ages and the Ottoman Period, people settled here again. The high floodplain underwent major changes during prehistoric times, becoming less and less exposed to floods. Thus the conditions for settling improved significantly over time. The Danube’s low-lying proximal floodplain in the Middle Neolithic gradually transformed into an elevated, flood-free high floodplain by the end of the MBA. The examined sedimentary succession is composed of the Danube’s alluvium, Castle Hill’s colluvium, and products of soil formation processes. The proportion of alluvial sediments decreased over time. In the Atlantic period (i. e., the Neolithic and most of the Copper Age), overbank alluvial sediments dominated the deposits. In the following Subboreal phase (Bronze Age), the proportion of colluvium increased gradually and significantly. The area was an almost intact floodplain in the Early Bronze Age and around the start of the MBA, which provided favourable conditions for natural soil development. In the MBA, sedimentation has accelerated ten- to twenty-fold. This sediment was primarily colluvial, indicating an increased sheet erosion on the hillsides due to more intensive land use (forest clearing, pastoral and agricultural activity, settlements), which reduced vegetation cover and resulted in soil degradation and increased runoff. MBA settlers and wetter climatic conditions also contributed to this process. After the area depopulated around the end of the MBA, the vegetation cover on the slopes recovered. The building up and level rising of the floodplain surface practically stopped, and the subsequent cultures used the surface that was formed until that time.