Folia archeologica 24.

Pálóczi-Horváth András: A magyarországi kunok régészeti kutatásának helyzete

THE PRESENT STATE OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH CONCERNING THE CUMANIANS IN HUNGARY In 1239, fragments of the once potent Cumanian-Kipchak allied tribes moved to Hungary, seeking refuge from the Mongolian conquest. In their new country they preserved their language, social structure, ancient customs and costume for a long time, their conversion to Christianity was lingering and rather formal. The merging of the Cumanians with the feudal Hungarian society was completed almost two centuries after their settling, at the end of the 14th century or at the beginning of the 15th . Solitary burial-places of Cumanian nobles, belonging to the clan aristocracy (Kígyóspuszta, Csólyos, Felsőszentkirály, Bánkút), dated to the late 13th resp. early 14th century, are performed after pagan rites and form a special group of Cumanian archaeological finds. These find complexes embrace objects and types charakteristic of the 13th—14th cent. East-European nomadic costume, arms, armour and horse furniture (helmets, mail shirts, arrowheads, sabres, horse bits, stirrups, bronze mirrors), coming to Hungary from the South Russian steppes. Analogues help us to analyse economic connections of the Cumanians with the neighbouring peoples; it seems that these were especially strong with the Caucasian Alans. We have to emphasize the importance of the richly decorated belts with metal mountings, having as yet no parallels in South Russia. The Oriental character of these belts is not easily reconciliated with their ornamentation, related to the knightly culture of the Occident (the gold buckle of the Kígyóspuszta belt is decorated with a battle scene among knights, while the Latin legends of the mountings are short prayers to patron saints; the silver-gilt mountings of the Felsőszentkirály belt bear heraldic representations). Research used to explain this ambiguity with their having been produced in Hungary, where Oriental and Occidental influences amalgamated. For the structure and way of wearing of the belts as well as for some belt ornaments (as the buckle of Csólyos or the Felsőszentkirály mountings in the form of double fleurs-de-lys) there are, though, parallels found on the Balkans and in Asia minor, pointing to a Byzantine cultural sphere, which admit a different conjecture. Connections between Byzantium and the Cumanians are well-known. The belts may have come thus from the Latin Empire, as princely gifts, or on the way of commerce, to the leaders of the Cuman ians, living in the environs of the Lower Danube, before their owners left for Hungary. This problem needs further investigations; as for the present we cannot exclude any of these possibilities. The villages of the settled and christianized Cumanians, with churches and encircling graveyards build another archaeological find group. Many of these sites between the Danube and the Tisza, the so-called „Little Cumania" (Kiskunság) were excavated. The last of the burials took place in the 16th and 17th centuries, before the settlements having been destroyed during the Turkish occupation; the opening is, though, not to be stated due to incomplete excavations up