A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 32. Kunt Ernő emlékére. (1994)

TANULMÁNYOK - TOMKA Péter: Belső-Ázsia a magyar népvándorlás kori régészet látókörében (magyar és angol nyelven)

struggle scenes in Asia from the Hiung-nu period, the chronological gap of some 500 years could not be surmounted. Central Asian relations are dominant even if certain objects or costumes could be traced back to an Inner Asiatic origin. Csanád Bálint was the first to make an attempt to summarize the results of Turkic archeology. Katalin U. Kőhalmi, an orientalist, and not an archeologist was the only one who undertook the task to make a synthesis (A steppék nomádja, fegyverben, lóháton). It was István Bona who went to the farthest to demonstrate Inner Asiatic connections - as regards both periods. Putting by the problems of Hun period for a while, let me to illustrate at first with the example of the Szegvár publication that almost every object and pheomenon of the Early Avar Period has its Inner Asiatic (and of course also Central Asiatic) relation, analogy. Informations had spread all over the steppe at an incredible speed. Surprising morphological similarities within Eurasia could be the consequences of wanderings, relations, kinship and convergences as well as they even could be the joint results of these factors. Therefore aamong the Early Avars horse burial is a tradition of Asian origin (its special forms: burial with two horses or with harness) examples: Kapcaly cemetery II. kurgans nos 8. and 13, Kuraj cemetery III., kurgan no. I., Tuva (after Grac), Kudyrge and other graves from the Altay region (type 1. - a horse skeleton to the right of the dead with an opposite orientation, type 2. - to the right with the same orientation: Kudyrge, graves nos. 9, 10, 11, Kapcaly II. etc. (12 sites), the genuine Inner Asiatic type is type IV. (Bolsaja Recka XIV., grave no. 49, Mongun Tajga, Baj Tajga, etc. (25 examples, to the left side of the dead, with opposite orientation); there are also burials which contain only horses. There are four examples of harness burials and it was only partial horse burial whose parallels he had not found, at least no true analogies of them - though since then finds of such kind have been already published from the Baraba steppe, though from a somewhat later period. Writing my study on Mongolian horse burials I myself was aware of this lack. Data available then seemed to refer to a western or a northern origin of the custom while today, first of all on the basis of ethnological data, I prefer the second hypothesis. Against all the opposite conventions burials with wooden coffins are widespread all over the steppe (Bona added some new examples to my collections). Besides, neither giving obulus with the dead seems to be a strictly European custom (several examples are known from China, Mongolia and from the Turkic period of Inner Asia). On the area in question the wear of odd earring among males is also present) not only in Central Asia where the examples of it are accumulating but also in the Ob and Altay regions). We find a few beads in male graves there just like in our country in the Avar period. There are examples of loosened belts and swords and quivers taken off and put into graves. As for the shape of certain objects: he quotes an analogy of the Szegvár forehead ornament from the site Mongun-Tajga (naturally beyond Central Asia). Sheet armours can be traced back as far as the Altay, Tuva and even Korea (following Akio Ito he quoted the graves nos. 54/b and 128. at Kyongju). The same is true for the early slight spears, swords with wrist straps, bone pendants, even for the harness. István Bona had traced the occurrences of the so-called vessels with cornered rim back as far as Tuva even erlier. I myself tried to complete a map of orientation types. Apart from the appearance of any kind of orientations at any place I could detect some trends as well, that is besides the usual W-E or E-W orientation here 176