Balogh Csilla – P. Fischl Klára: Felgyő, Ürmös-tanya. A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Monumenta Archeologica 1. (Szeged, 2010)

The Avar Cemetery at Felgyő, Ürmős-Tanya

272 BALOGH Csilla decorated belts were exclusively found in male burials. The additional buckle found in six graves suggests the presence of a second belt. Most belts were fastened by a simple rectangular iron buckle. Trapezoidal and lyre shaped buckles, known from the period's other burial grounds, were also found at Felgyő. The shield-tongue oval buckle from Grave 89 is a typical Gepidic ware. Analogies to the buckle with rectangular plate from Grave 107 too can be quoted from Germanic contexts. Bronze buckles were recovered from four burials. The buckle and the mounts were part of the same set in three of these (Graves 21, 63 and 68). An iron buckle was found in Grave 73, a female burial, together with a cast bronze, rectangular buckle. Belts with iron mounts. Two burials yielded iron belt mounts. The young man in Grave 14 had a belt adorned with two openwork rectangular mounts and a strap-end, while two rectangular mounts and an iron propeller mount were found in Grave 74, another male burial. Neither grave contained buckles, perhaps because they were made from some perishable material. Belts fitted with iron mounts are infrequent in the corpus of Avar finds, and the number of rectangular iron mounts is fairly low. The same holds true for the incidence of iron mounts prior to 567, which led Kiss to conclude that the fashion of iron mounts appeared among the Gepids shortly before 567 (KISS 1996. 213). Iron mounts have mostly been found in eastern Transdanubian cemeteries with a pronouned Germanic component (Kölked-Feketekapu A, Környe, Szekszárd-Bogyiszlói Road), i.e. in regions where there is other artefactual evidence for the survival of Gepidic communities (cp. KISS 1992). Obviously, sporadic occurrences are known from other areas of the Avar settlement territory too, for example from Grave 100 of the Szegvár-Oromdűlő cemetery in eastern Hungary (LÖRINCZY 1992). No more than a few analogies can be quoted to the iron strap-end from Grave 14 from the Danube-Tisza Interfluve, such as the pieces from Graves 76 and 180 of the Kundomb cemetery (SALAMON-CS. SEBESTYÉN 1995, Pis 12 and 25). The latter burial also yielded Törökkanizsa type mounts and a Tarnaméra type large strap-end. The burial probably represents one of the earliest graves in the cemetery opened after the mid-7th century, although the presence of a cast trapezoidal buckle decorated with a tendril design challenges this date to some extent. The iron propeller mount from Grave 74 of the Felgyő cemetery is another rare type, whose single parallel known to me comes from Grave 45 of the Jászapáti-Nagyállási Road cemetery (MADARAS 1994, Taf. VI). It seems likely that the Felgyő graves with iron mounts can be assigned to the same chronological horizon as the Kundomb burials. Fonlak type mounts (Fig. 6. 1)." Grave 215 contained the burial of a young Mongoloid man wearing a belt adorned with silver mounts. The belt was fastened with a rectangular iron buckle. Four shield shaped mounts and a double shield shaped one came to light from this burial, together with four small strap-ends, the latter lying underneath the shield shaped mounts. The double shield shaped mount adorned the rear section of the belt.

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4 The grave was undisturbed, suggesting that the large strap-end missing from the set had not been deposited in the burial. In contrast to the single mount of this type from the Felgyő burial, the catalogue of Fonlak type belts assembled by Éva Garam indicates that graves with double shield shaped mounts usually contained two or three pieces (GARAM 2001. 115-116), It is possible that the belt had originally been fitted with more mounts of this type, but that similarly to the large strap-end, these had not been placed in the grave. Representing the earliest group of mounts harking back to a Byzantine origin, the dating of Fonlak type mounts to the initial third of the 7th century seems well-founded (BÓNA 1971, 297; MARTIN 1990, 67; KISS 1996, 215; GARAM 2001, 117-119). The belt set in the equestrian burial from Sinpetru German in Romania is dated by the solidus of Heraclius and Heraclius Constantine minted between 616 and 625 (SOMOGYI 1997, 77), while a post quern date for the pieces from Grave 132 of the Linz-Zizlau cemetery is provided by the silver coin of Heraclius issued around 630 (LADENBAUER-OREL 1960. 56). Bocsa type mounts and strap-ends with a toothcut interlace pattern (Fig. 6. 4). The belt worn by the man interred in Grave 83 was fastened with an iron belt. The belt was fitted with an oval bronze mount, two shield shaped pressed mounts with a beaded border of silvered bronze, a large plain strapend and nine small strap-ends of bronze decorated with a toothcut interlace pattern. The belt mounts can be assigned to the group of finds comprising also stone inlaid pseudobuckles with a beaded border. In addition to assemblages with gold pseudo-buckles (Kunbábony, Grave 1, Bócsa, Backa Palanka in Serbia) and their pressed imitations (Kiskunfélegyháza-Pákapuszta, Maglód), grave assemblages featuring mounts with a beaded border can also be assigned here (Dány, Zsámbok, Grave 2, the unprovenanced T shaped suspension mount of the Fleissig Collection, perhaps from the Szeged area). The Felgyő mounts and the bronze mounts with beaded border from Grave 103 of the Backo Petrovo Selo cemetery (BUGARSKY 2009, SI. 86, Tab. XVII) are the most poorly made pieces. Whilst the toothcut interlace pattern on the small strapend from Grave 83 is hardly alien to the Bócsa group, appearing on buckles (Csanytelek. Maglód, Petőfiszállás), the suspension loop of the Bócsa sword, the bezelled finger-ring, the quiver suspension loop and the openwork gold plaque adorning the quiver's lower part from Grave 1 at Kunbábony, it can most frequently be encountered on strap-ends (Csanytelek, Csepel, Csepel-Háros, Grave 8, Csepel-Waterworks, BugyiÜrbőpuszta, Grave 14 and Szeged-Fehértó A, Grave 3). The exact chronological position of the Bócsa group (princely burials containing pseudo-buckles with beaded border) is still unresolved: these assemblages are broadly dated between the initial and final third of the 7th century. The zoomorphic variant of the toothcut interlace pattern adorning the finds accompanying the pseudo-buckles first appeared in the early decades of the 7th century under cultural impacts from Italy and southern Germany (NAGY 1992, 38), suggesting that the overlap between the use of artefacts bearing a toothcut interlace pattern and of assemblages with pseudo-buckles can be put in the second quarter of the 7th century, which in turn provides the chronological position of the belt from Grave 83 of the Felgyő cemetery. Eastern Alpine strap-end (Fig. 6. 5). Grave 197 contained the burial of an adult Mongolid man. His belt, fastened with 13 Fig. 6 provides an oven'iew of the mount decorated belts found in the Ürmös-tanya cemetery. The sequence of the mounts does not correspond to a chronological sequence and neither is their position to be regarded as a reconstruction of the belt. 14 The position of double shield shaped mounts could be accurately reconstructed based on the observations made during the excavation of Grave 696 of the Budakalász cemeteiy (VIDA-PÁSZTOR 1996. 344-345) and Grave 647 of the Kölked-Feketekapu A cemetery (KISS 1996. 165-166. Taf. 102). For the short pendent straps, cp. Grave 15 of the Keszthely-Fenékpuszta, Horreum cemetery (BARKÓCZ1 1968. 3. Fig. 15). For the structure of the belt, cp. FIEDLER 1994. 36-37.