Garam Éva szerk.: Between East and West - History of the peoples living in hungarian lands (Guide to the Archaeological Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum; Budapest, 2005)

HALL 8 AND CORRIDOR - The Avar period (567/568-804 A.D.) (Éva Garam)

103. Earring with pyramidal pendant from Üllő. First third of the 7th century (Budakalász, Kölked A and B, Zamárdi) reflect the ties between southern Pannónia and the towns under Byzantine-Italian control. The iron chairs decorated with silver and copper inlay from the rich female burials in the Zamárdi and Kölked cemeteries are an indication that elements of Mediterranean urban culture reached the Avars' land. The impact of late antique culture from the south and from Italy can be chiefly noted in Transdanubia. No genuine Byzantine articles, only their simple, local copies made by Avar craftsmen occur among the grave goods in the cemeteries in the southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain and in eastern Hungary, 4. THE GERMANIC ELEMENT IN EARLY AVAR CULTURE Although the Avars appeared in the Elbe region even before their settlement in the Carpathian Basin, they only conducted campaigns against Byzantium. Before 590, there is no evidence for any contact with the west or for clashes with the Merovingian world. That year, they defended their Slavic allies from the Bavarians. Following several clashes, the Avars finally made peace with the Merovingians, and they entered into military alliance with the Langobards too. Contacts of this type between the Avars and the Germanic world can be dated to the first decades of the 7th century. These ties became weaker after 628, when the khagan attacked the Langobards and plundered Cividale (ancient Forum Iulii) to compensate for the lack of gold after Byzantium stopped sending the subsidy. The many hundreds of grave goods from the early Avar cemeteries are eloquent testimony to Germanic-Avar-Byzantine relations. Unlike the belts with many pendent straps adorned with plain silver mounts and the earrings with large spherical or pyramidal pendants (Fig. 103) distributed throughout the early Avar settlement territory, finds reflecting contact with the Germanic world (Langobards, Bavarians, Alemanns, Franks), articles made in the traditional eastern style and pieces betraying Byzantine cultural influences have been recovered exclusively from the cemeteries on the western fringes of the settlement territory. One excellent example of the many strands making up the rich tapestry of early Avar culture is the lavish assortment of finds recovered from the burials in the Kölked cemetery. Belt mounts and strap ends often bore a simplified version of the Germanic animal style reduced to an almost abstract interlace pattern, with the animal bodies indicated with delicate hatching. Iron belt mounts with a decoration of silver strips hammered into furrows reflected the Germanic taste of the Merovingian period (Fig. 104). Similarly to Byzantine articles, iron belt mounts inlaid with silver and belt ornaments decorated with an interlace pattern occur but rarely in the Avar cemeteries of the Great Hungarian Plain. Grave 119 of the Kölked cemetery, a female burial from the first half of the 7th century (which was sadly looted in antiquity), contained unique costume articles of Avar, Germanic and Byzantine high culture: a large, gold disc brooch (Fig. 105), a gold bracelet