Funeral Archaeology and Avar Culture: Old Excavations Yield Serial Data

Abstract

Cemeteries of the Avar Period (567-829) in Hungaryedited by I. Kovrig. Vol. I: E. Garam, I. Kovrig, J. Gy. Szabó, Gy. Török, Avar Finds in the Hungarian National Museum (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1975) 368 pp. with 152 Figures and 37 Plates. Vol. II: A. Kiss, Avar Cemeteries in County Baranya (Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1977) 174 pp. with 71 Figures and 92 Plates. The volumes are published by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest V. Alkotmány utca 21, Budapest, Hungary, and distributed by Kultura, H-1389, Budapest, P.O.B. 149, Hungary.

The Avars occupied the lands surrounding the Carpathian Basin (the old Roman province of Pannonia) from 567 A.C. until the early 9th century, but they are little known historically. To their literate Christian neighbors they figured only as dangerous enemies and Charlemagne destroyed them as such. Only within this century has their material culture been identified and archaeological research has set about trying to reconstruct their civilization. Hungarian scholars have advanced strong arguments that much information relating to the social structure as well as to the religious mentality is “coded” in the cemeteries. A new corpus of volumes, the first two of which are reviewed here, are intended to provide a systematic presentation of the excavation of thousands of tombs since the 1930s. This series promises to provide a quantitatively significant body of data on a given funeral horizon, as well as a coherent point of view on the material culture of the Avars, of great interest to students of the early Middle Ages in Europe in its interrelations with the world of the steppes.