Istvánovits Eszter (szerk.): A nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum Évkönyve 55. (Nyíregyháza, 2013)

A 2010. október 11-14. között Nyíregyházán és Szatmárnémetiben megtartott Vándorló és letelepült barbárok a kárpáti régióban és a szomszédos területeken (I-V. század) Új leletek, új értelmezések című nemzetközi régészeti konferencia anyagai - Sorin Bulzan: Császárkori (II-III. századi) telep a Berettyó völgyében Margine/Széltalló, "Valea Tániei-Tarina+ (Bihar megye, Románia)

Ivan Bugarski - Vujadin Ivanisevic

(Vuksan 1989. 117, 122, n. 7). The key position of Margum and Kovin is perhaps best shown on a map depicting the state of the Carpathian Basin before the massive hydro-regulatory works. The map was made in 1938 in Budapest, on the basis of the available cartographic sources. For that reason it is not completely reliable, but it is certainly very illustrative. The map shows the Carpathian Basin considerably different from what it is at present, with lots of water and wide areas of river flooding (Kir 1938.) (Fig. 6). Yet contra Margum, on the opposite bank of the Danube, one may notice a narrow zone of dry land - a natural corridor to the innerlands of the Balkans, via the Morava valley (cf. Bugarski- Ivanisevic 2012). One may suppose, for instance, that this was the reason why the Hunnic leader Uldin set his camp precisely at that spot (cf. Granic 1939. 92); or why, according to Jordanes {Get. LVIII, 300), in 505 in the vicinity of the Margus River and the Danube the Gepidic general Mundo met and defeated the army commanded by Sabinianus, magister militum per Illyricum; or, finally, why the Byzantine general Priscus met Avar khagan there around 596 (Theophylact Hist. VII, 10). Another important crossing of the river was to the east, defended accordingly by a system of two forts - Lederata and Translederata on the opposite riverbank (Jovanovic 1996. 69-72).

Intrigued by an older, accidental find of a buckle ending in the shape of an eagle’s head, Jovan Kovacevic and Dusán Pribakovic had organised the 1963 excavations in the part of the Kovin park from which, most probably, the buckle came. Apart from the layers from later and more distant epochs, five graves of “a Germanic (Gépid) 6,h century cemetery ... in rows” were explored (Pribakovic 1963. 129, 130, n. 3). The graves were oriented west-east and the most interesting were the ones of a warrior and a woman. From the collected small finds, the most characteristic are the buckles, fragmented brooches, a bronze torque and two biconical burnished pots (Milinkovic 2005. 208- 212, Pekovic 2006. 41-43, Pekovic 2007.45-48). It has already been noticed that these finds resemble to a great extent the ones from the C phase graves at the Vise Grobalja cemetery (Ivanisevic- Bugarski 2008. 45, Fig. 8, cf. IvaniSevic et al. 2006.). Precisely from that burial phase we have a considerable number of Western and Northern Germanic finds. Most of those Viminacium graves come from the C2 phase, i.e. from the second third of the 6th century. As for the buckle ending in the shape of an eagle’s head from Kovin, it was noted that it resembled the Crimean ones and it has been dated to the first half of the 6th century (cf. Aibabin 1990. 35, Aibabin 1999. 100, Fig. 36: 1, Pl. XXVII: 173) (Fig. 7). One may believe that during Justinian’s era the Romans controlled Constantiola for strategic reasons, at least to some extent. If this was so, local Germanic graves dated to the same period could in fact have belonged to the Heruli, situated there in their capacity as Byzantine foederati.

In respect of data from the sources, from which we can learn that at that time and later on the Gepids were enemies of the Empire (cf. TheophylactMsí. VIII, 3), Vujadin Ivanisevic and Michel Kazanski rightfully doubted the possibility that they were engaged in defending the Danubian limes (Ivanisevic et al. 2006. 133-136). For instance, Procopius wrote that during the rule of Emperor Justinian, the Romans defended themselves against the barbarians by engaging foederati from the rival tribes (Procopius Hist. arc. 11). In a recently published article, Ivanisevic and Kazanski develop this concept and connect Northern Germanic finds from the Serbian Danube region with the Heruli, an idea previously advocated by Attila Kiss (1984.). The authors explain the appearance of the Western Germanic finds by the contacts the Heruli once had with Germanic tribes in the South Moravian region, which implies that the Balkanian Heruli of Justinian’s era represented a militarypolitical unit rather than a strictly defined ethnic group (Ivanisevic-Kazanski 2010. 156).

The Heruli played an important role in defending the Danube limes. According to the written sources, around 512 Emperor Anastasius allowed them to cross the Danube and settle in the

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