Evolution of a design system in the eastern part of the Carpathian Basin. Transformations of the vessel-based human representations of the Middle Neolithic Szakálhát culture and the genesis of the Late Neolithic Tisza culture's 'textile' decoration

It is a rare opportunity, at least in the research of the Neolithic, when one gets the possibility to look 'behind' ceramic decorations and see a concept at work. It is even more rare to be in the position to watch how these concepts and ideas, related customs, designs and decorations change together through consecutive periods and cultures as part of an interlinked system, creating very diverse phenomena but always preserving something, thus maintaining a continuity of the whole. Beside using carefully selected questions and analytic methods the find material in focus must also meet several criteria to provide a suitable source material, involving the constitution of the ceramic sets, the complexity and structure of the decorations, the technological background and its social implications, and perhaps a relatively undisturbed cultural development. The present paper attempts to describe the emergence, transformations and decline of such a system, focusing on changes of practical, social and possible cognitive functions of certain vessel types, incorporating diversified archaeological observations, and utilising concepts from the field of social signaling.