Perémi Ágota (szerk.): Hadak útján. Népvándorlás Kor Fiatal Kutatóinak XXIII. konferenciakötete (Veszprém, 2016)

Bíró Csaba–Szenthe Gergely: Műhelyhagyományok és technológiatranszfer. Elmélkedés az avar kori fémműveseinek kilétéről

Csaba Bíró-Gergely Szenthe

WORKSHOP TRADITIONS AND TECHNOLOGYTRANSFER: OR WHO THE AVAR GOLDSMITHS WERE

There are signs that several methods for casting non- ferrous metals were known in the early Middle Ages in Europe, and, moreover, variations of lost-wax casting were applied. In the light of the first results, the applied metal working techniques (casting technology) in the Carpathian Basin were unique comparing to the neighbouring areas. The majority of cast objects was produced by the multiplying lost-wax method reconstructed by P. C. Bol by Antique evidences. Positive textile-structures can be observed on the reverse side of the Avar Age one-sided casts examined by us. According to studies tested also by experimental methods, the textile was applied at the reproduction of wax-models used for casting a metallic object. The textile using technology can be the same method operated in the Scandinavian workshops.There is such a difference between the two reconstructed methods that it refers there were possibly at least two different workshop traditions if we take the conservatism of crafts technologies into consideration. The casts made without textile in the Carpathian Basin can be the proofs of a custom before the Avar Age.

On the basis of the first textile-casts the proofs of an earlier unknown technology appeared in the Carpathian Basin in the middle of the 7th century. The

appearance of this workshop tradition was thanks to thechangesand migration inthearea in the second half of the 7th century. The separation of the two methods diferring partly in modelling and reproduction of objects existed during the whole Avar period: their parallel and independent existence can be explained by the obstacles in technology-transfer.

Besides the above mentioned two main groups sparsely there were copper-casts among the Carpathian Basin artefacts which wear such atypcal characteristics in the Avar environment like above average thickness or volume of cast objects. Besides the characteristics referring to workshop practices, the form of these objects differs also from the common artefacts of the era as they bear Byzantine characteristics. (Szentes- Felsőcsordajárás, Szentes-Lapistó, Csúny: belt mounts with griffin, Mártély, belt-set). They could be made by craftsmen working for the Avar elite but educated in workshops with late antique tradition.

As the reasoning bears some questionable aspects, and the researches are on an initial phase, the paper does not intend to offer final solutions, rather to give impulses for later researches, projects, for the authors' expectations.

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