Gyöngyössy Márton (szerk.): Perspectives on the Past. Major Excavations in County Pest (Szentendre, 2008)
An Avar cemetery at Nagykőrös (568-81 1/829 AD) In addition to a handful of Bronze Age burials and Sarmatian settlement features, an early Avar cemetery with 107 burials was excavated between 1984 and 1991 in an area known as Száraz-dűlő, the investigation of which had originally begun as a rescue excavation. About one-half of the burials in the graveyard used by an extended family over three generations had been disturbed by grave robbers. The deceased were generally interred in a chestlike wooden coffin or laid on a wooden bier, whose remains could be identified in the grave pit. The remains of a wooden pillar with a diameter of 22 cm could be traced from the collapsed coffin lid to a depth of 1 meter in the ground in Grave 57, a looted burial in the middle of the cemetery. The looter’s shaft was dug beside this grave marker. The cemetery was used between the last third of the 7th century and the first decades of the 9th century. Noteworthy among the grave goods are pressed silver and bronze belt sets, occasionally decorated with glass inlay or gilding and a tendril pattern from the late 7th century, a small strap end of pressed silver bearing an animal figure, the plait clamps of wealthier men, a bone stopper carved with a stylised face for a leather bottle, and the belt sets decorated with openwork lily motifs or a palmette design against a punched background, the latter dating from the end of the cemetery’s use. • László Simon 1. Pressed silver belt mount with geometric design 2. Cast bronze strap end with an openwork lily motif from Grave 90 3. Belt buckle 4. Bone stopper from Grave 59 5. Plait clamp 6. Pressed belt mount 7. View of the site
