A WORLD IN MOTION
Between Tradition and Transformation in the Tumulus culture along the Danube
International Conference
Budapest, 22–24 April, 2026
The world was in motion in the mid-second millennium BC, marked by a dynamic interplay of change and tradition. By around 1450 BC, life along the Danube had changed significantly compared with fifty or a hundred years earlier. This is particularly striking in the Carpathian Basin, where long-standing tell settlements were abandoned, pastoral communities embracing the warrior ideal emerged, and material culture was transformed, with cremation becoming a common burial practice.
This transformation took place during the Tumulus culture (c. 1600–1300 BC), which bridged the centuries of the so-called tell cultures and the Urnfield period. The Tumulus culture not only divided periods but also connected them; it did not simply erase traditions but transmitted them. This period was both a driving force of change and a medium through which traditions were passed on.
For various reasons, systematic regional and micro-regional research programmes focusing on the Tumulus period have lagged behind those devoted to the tell cultures and the Urnfield period. Despite this imbalance, multidisciplinary research projects over the past decade have clarified many fundamental questions concerning the Tumulus period and have raised many new ones.
It is therefore important and timely to raise awareness of this topic and to discuss the latest research findings, results and questions focusing entirely on the Tumulus culture and its period. The Tumulus culture deserves to be studied and evaluated in its own right, as an understanding of the broader process remains incomplete without it. This conference is dedicated to perspectives and approaches that may reshape the study of the Tumulus culture and its period, helping to advance our understanding of this significant transformation.
ORGANISING TEAM
Gábor Sánta is an archaeologist and affiliated researcher at the Institute of Archaeology ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities since 2023, and member of the MTA–ELTE HTK Lendület "Momentum" BASES Research Group. He is also a contributor to the Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW–ÖAI) within the Urnfield Culture Networks research group. His primary research interests include Tumulus culture settlements and metalwork. His work focuses on settlement structure, households, palaeoenvironment, and subsistence strategies during the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in southern Hungary, employing archaeological and geoarchaeological methods as well as spatial analysis. He also evaluates metal composition data derived from archaeometallurgical analyses (PIXE, XRF, LIA) to investigate long-distance connections among Tumulus culture communities in southern Hungary.
Kristóf Fülöp is an archaeologist who has been a junior research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities since 2022 and has served as a research assistant since 2024. He is also a member of the MTA–ELTE HTK Lendület "Momentum" BASES Research Group. His research primarily focuses on the micro- and macro-scale analysis of Late Bronze Age cremation burials. His methodological approach is grounded in the theoretical framework of the cremation technological sequence and is complemented by object-biographical analyses and insights from experimental archaeology.
Polett Kósa is an archaeologist and a staff member of the Department of the New Archaeological Collection at the National Institute of Archaeology, Hungarian National Museum, Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre since 2025. Her research focuses on Late Bronze Age communities and settlement patterns in the Trans-Tisza region, with particular emphasis on ceramic assemblages. She applies both traditional typological approaches and statistical methods. Her work concentrates on the classical Gáva culture and its antecedent periods.
Péter Mali is an archaeologist and civil servant responsible for archaeological heritage management in Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok County. His research focuses on the spatial analysis of Tumulus period settlement networks and on the cultural context of the border regions of the Tumulus culture, with particular attention to the Baranya region and the Rákóczifalva group. His work combines classical typological analysis with GIS-based and statistical methods.
Ákos Mengyán is an archaeologist and staff member of the Archaeometry Laboratory at the National Institute of Archaeology, Hungarian National Museum, Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Exploration Geosciences, University of Miskolc. His research focuses on Bronze Age pottery production in the Carpathian Basin. His methodological approach follows the theoretical framework of the chaîne opératoire, with particular emphasis on raw material selection, tempering, and firing techniques, using thin-section petrography and analytical methods such as XRD, XRF and SEM–EDX.
Nóra Szabó is an archaeologist and research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, where she has been working since 2022, and member of the MTA–ELTE HTK Lendület "Momentum" BASES Research Group. Her primary research interest concerns Middle Bronze Age settlements in the Carpathian Basin. Her work addresses the internal structure of settlements, functional and spatial variability in material culture, and the analysis of settlement networks.
Anna Szigeti is an archaeologist at the Radiocarbon Competence Centre (HUN-REN Institute for Nuclear Research – Isotoptech Zrt.), where she has been employed since 2020. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Szeged. Her research primarily focuses on the Hajdúbagos–Cehăluţ ceramic tradition in the north-eastern Carpathian Basin, employing an integrated methodology that combines traditional typology with radiocarbon dating and isotope analysis.
Viktória Kiss is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, and the head of the MTA–ELTE HTK Lendület "Momentum" BASES Research Group.
Gabriella Kulcsár is a senior research fellow and the Director of the Institute of Archaeology ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, and member of the MTA–ELTE HTK Lendület "Momentum" BASES Research Group.
BTM, Aquincum Museum, Budapest & Hungarian National Museum, Budapest & Móra Ferenc Museum, Szeged