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Régészet - Szentpéteri József: Az Avar Kaganátus hatalmi központjai – a hringek

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József Szentpéteri

The brings - Political centres of the Avar Khaganate

One of the still unresolved issues in the research of the Avar period in the Carpathian Basin (AD 567-895) is the location of the Avars’ political and administrative centre or centres. The data on the hring, the Avar Khagan’s seat, in the written sources refer exclusively to the final phase of the Khaganate’s history around the turn of the 8th/9th centuries and thus any theory concerning the hring’s location during earlier periods is no more than educated guesswork. The most striking part of the archaeological heritage of the Avar period (estimated at some four thousand sites), yielding the most valuable information, is made up of the burials of simple and horse-mounted warriors. The hypothesis presented in this paper is based on the analysis of the distribution of these burials.

The political centre of the Early Avar period (567-626): the Zamárdi region (County Somogy, Transdanubia, Hungary)

The regional distribution of the roughly 1200 sites yielding graves containing the burials of foot and mounted warriors was analysed as part of the study on the stratification of Avar society. The mapping of the relevant sites indicated that the most important sites during the rule of the Bayan Dynasty lay along the right Danube bank: in other words, the wealthiest sites came to light in the eastern half of Transdanubia.

In September 1993,1 had the opportunity to study an aerial photo made in 1971, now housed in the Archives of the Institute of Cartography of the Ministry of Defence. (Fig. 1) The photograph shows an unusual archaeological site in an area known as Zamárdi-Kútvölgyi-dűlő on the southern shore of Lake Balaton. The roughly 30 hectares large site is 1000 m long by 350-400 m wide and it is enclosed by wide ditches extending toward the lake. The site can probably be interpreted as an earthen fort whose defences utilised the seasonally dry sediment catchment gulleys. The salvage excavations preceding the construction of the M7 Motorway in County Somogy conducted in the site’s immediate vicinity since 2002 brought to light the remains of a settlement complex made up of an earthen fort, a servicing village, a smelting settlement and a cemetery, which can probably be interpreted as representing the remains of the period’s political centre. (Fig. 3)

The political centre of the Middle and Late Avar period (626-795/803): Solt-Tételhegy (County Bács-Kiskun, Danube-Tisza Interfluve, Hungary)

Drawing from the written sources of the Carolingian period, recent studies on the Migration period history of the Carpathian Basin assume that the seat of the Avar Khaganate (Regia Avarorum Hring) lay in the Danube-Tisza Interfluve. However, the exact location of the seat is not known, and neither do we know for how long this seat functioned as the Khaganate’s political centre.

A map showing the political conditions of the 9th century in the Carpathian Basin prepared jointly with Professor István Bóna and a drawing made in 1998 by Professor Bóna both assume that the Tételhegy site may have functioned as the Avars' political centre (hring). (Fig. 4)

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