The most important of the Early Bronze Age artifacts which have been collected from sites in the Southern Alfold (Great Hungarian Plain) were published in compre hensive monographs during the sixties. Together with previous research their study contributed greatly to archaeology in Hungary. Istvan Bona's comprehensive studies of the Nagyrev culture and then the Obeba—Pitvaros group were the first to appear in 1963 and 1965. Shortly afterwards, Nandor Kalicz published his monograph on the Early Bronze Age including the Southern Alfold and artifacts from the Mako group. In 1974 Istvan Ecsedy's description of the burial from Csongrad and Bela Kurti's report on the most recently discovered Early Bronze Age materials were published in the same volume. The first is a synthesis of all the data that was kno wn at that time about the Ochre grave — Kurgan peoples of Eastern Hungary. Bela Kurti broadened our picture of the period by his study of unpublished artifacts from the museum in Szeged as well as the material from two other rescue excavations. Since that time however, work on the origins of the Early Bronze Age has essentially stopped. The results of this decade of synthesis may be briefly summed up as follows : Although the people of the Ochre Grave culture were previously thought to be the earliest of the Early Bronze Age group and thus were ascribed a major role in the development of the Early Bronze Age of the Southern Alfold, it now appears that the formation of the Early Bronze Age in this area has neither the chronological nor the typological links with the Ochre grave culture in the way it had been thought. On the basis of Gyula Gazdapusztai's research, new Rumanian work, and gravegoods from the Csongrad burial, Istvan Ecsedy now considers the first occurence of the Ochre grave — Kurgan culture to be synchronous with the Bodrogkeresztur culture.