Dr. I. Pap szerk.: Studia historico-anthropologica (Anthropologia Hungarica 22. Budapest, 1992)

Üllő II and Dunaszekcső furnish convincing information on the strong dominance of the Europoid peculiarities within the wide masses of the population of the Avar khaganat. The Europoid component also seems to be clearly dominant in the enormous series of the Üllő I cemetery. The most hypermorph groups of the Europoid groups of the Avar period are the ones from Ellend II, Kékesd and Környe from the Transdanubia. Great morphological similarity can be found among the finds from the cemeteries of Szob-Homokok, Jutás, Szentes-Kaján Tiszaderzs and the craniological series from the West-Caspian Mingetshaur (Catacomb burial period) as well as from the cemetery of the Ukrainian Saltovo. The great distance of the preponderant majority of the Central Danubian Avar period finds of all craniological series from the ones originating in the Hun (Tashtuek) and Turkish period of the Minussinsk basin, the Altay-Sayan mountains and Kazakhstan is by no means out of interest from ethnogenetical point of view. The very marked similarity of the anthropological material from the cemeteries of Váchartyán and Üllő I to the West-Kazakhstan Sarmatians' representative group can also be mentioned in this context. The morphological comparison gave evidence supporting the fact that the preponderant majority of the Avar Kaganat's populations had a physiognomy somewhat more gracile and they had more profilized faces. The Avar period aborigines inhabiting the Central Danubian Basin bore more of the morphological peculiarities of the Southern (hypomorph) Europoids than of tenth century Hungarians. CHAPTER 4 FORMATION OF THE CENTRAL DANUBIAN VARIANT This chapter consists of seven parts: "Intergroup variation of some craniometrical traits in the Central Danubian region", "Comparison to the materials of the Eurasiatic continent", "Relationship between the hypermorph and hypomorph components in the Central Danubian region", "Epochal changes of the craniological complexes patterns in the Central Danube region", "Distribution of the craniological complexes in the Central Danubian region", "Secondary race-components in the Alpine-Carpathian area". We applied the geographical method as the basic one to clarify the formation of main morphological peculiarities of recent Hungarians. The author made use of the Avar Period craniological series which were completely Europoids according to the expressivity of the flatness of the facial skeleton (425 male crania from 14 sites). All main geographical regions (Transdanubia, Danube-Tisza interfluvial, Trans-Tisza, Great Plain) are represented in this contingent. The most representative of these contingents is the one originating from the first centuries of 2nd millennia A D. (757 male crania from 28 cemeteries). The regions of NorthHungary and the Southern part of the Trans-Plain are outlined besides Transdanubia and the Danube-Tisza interfluvial. When comparing with the Avar Period ones, the summarized group from the Transdanubian Late Roman Period has been combined with a small case-number series of crania from the Central Danubian Sarmatia. The essence of the geographical method is the evaluation and investigation of intergroup variability. It was focused to establish the differences between the maximal and minimal group values of the craniological traits which were given in the percentages of the minimal mean-values. The efficiency of this method was analyzed by Ya. Ya. Roginskiy (1954). The intergroup variability of traits were evaluated in correlation with the intra-group variability. The author used the values of the variation coefficient calculated on Norwegian male cranial series from Oslo (Schreiner 1939) as standard value. The data from the Avar Period and from the epoch of Arpadian dynasty produced a gradient showing decreasing mean value of the transversal diameter, of the nasal width of the cranial, height-longitudinal and nasal indices from the West (Transdanubia) to the East (Trans-Tisza, however the southern part of the Trans-Tisza Plain), whereas the mean value of the bizygomatic diameter and that of the upper-facial height as well as the values of upper-facial and of orbital indices were increasing.