A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1969-1970 (Debrecen, 1971)

Régészet, Ókortudomány - Mesterházy Károly: Bone-Jars from the Avar Age

Károly Mesterházy BONE-JARS FROM THE AVAR AGE A number of cylindrical objects made of bone were found in tombs from the Avar age. Their identification is aggravated by the circumstance that one can only rarely come upon such objects in a corpus from the Avar age on the one hand and that they were not subject to a chemical analysis on the other. In our collection we endeavoured to make a list and give a description of objects that are likely to facilitate the identification of the above jars. The following authors have tried so far to define the function of these bone jars

: J. HAMPEL, who considered some in the Museum of Keszthely to be the mounting on the sheath of swords, others the lateral bit of curb reins. N. FETTICH described the one in Győr as a flute; in GYULA LÁSZLO's definition the piece in Mokrin is an ointmentjar and he also reconstructed its closing device. I. KOVRIG described the ones found in Jánoshida and Alattyán as saltcellars. Lacking a comparable corpus to fall back on, D. CSALLÁNY regarded all similar objects as rattle-holders. According to him the larger end of the cylinder is fixed to the belt or in the neck and a rattle is tied to the narrower end with a piece of strap. In the definition of the function and the way they were worn, we started off from the position they took in the tombs and from the structural properties of the various individual pieces. The objects found at Győr and Szeged (Kundomb), and, to a lesser extent, the ones from Mokrin are likely to have been hung from the belt. There seem to be various ways and means of fixing them to the belt. It seems also possible that these objects were kept and carried in haversacks. (Alattyán, Biharkeresztes). The structure of bone-cylinders. One, usually the larger, end was blocked up with a flat wooden plug which was fixed tight with several (two to four] clinches. [Keszthely, Jánoshida]. The clinches can have been made of metal (iron, bronze), wood or bone. The bone cylinder found at Alattyán had one end blocked firmly with a tight-fitting wooden plug. On the inner side the roughly burnished surface of bony tissue grated hard against the wooden plug. A similar way of blocking is to be assumed also in the cases where there are two holes opposite each other at the larger end of the objects. These holes are invariably found to be small, their rims show but little abrasion indicating that the cylinder once plugged, was not usually opened again. The clinch used presumably stretched from one hole to the other, i. e. the same clinch was fixed in both holes (Ártánd, Mokrin, Biharkeresztes-Lencséshát). The closing device of cylinders: on the end of the cylinders where the closing device was mounted, we find two drilled holes, usually opposite each other, 3-8 mm from the rim. On the outer side of these holes the bony surface is considerably worn off and the inner side is also tattered, especially at right angles to the axis of the holes. The closing and opening devices can have been similar to those found at Biharkeresztes-Lencséshát: there was a bronze wire in the holes drilled opposite each other. As it appears to us, the closingopening device was a flat wooden plug turning round the bronze wire as its axis. Judging from the amount of abrasion the cylinder found at Alattyán had a similar closing device. We find the same working principle in saltcellars and itch-jars on the Hortobágy. Parallel ethnographical examples, as has been shown above, point to the fact that bone cylinders are encountered also among the everyday implements of nomadic tribes in the migration period. As we can find almost complete formal and structural correspondences between the objects of the Avar age and the implements of nomadic tribes, it seems highly likely that functional correspondences fall within the same range of probability, since the same way and circumstances of life give rise to implements of the same of similar xshape and function. Considering what is expounded above, we are of the opinion that these cylindrical objects made of bone can be considered salt-cellars or jars for ointment. 116