Following the Gepidic-Langobardic war, the territory east of the Tisza was occupied by the population groups swept to the region by the Avars from the southern Russian steppe, raising the possibility that although Bayan, the khagan of the Avars had entered into alliance with the Langobards, the military troops partaking in the war were recruited from among the peoples of steppean stock. There is little likelihood that a territory that the Avars had fought for would have been ceded to a subjected population group that had joined them.
In this situation, the settlement territory of the population from the Eastern European steppe arriving to the Carpathian Basin acted as a buffer zone between the Avars establishing themselves in Pannonia and the Turks pursuing them.
The distribution and clustering of the sixth–seventh-century sites, and the presence or absence of certain burial customs outlines a distinct group along the Maros, principally along the river’s southern bank, and in the Körös-Tisza-Maros interfluve, whose settlement centre can quite clearly be identified along the Tisza. The territory north of the Körös was a patchwork of different population groups: it was settled by the surviving Gepidic population, the descendants of a small dispersed steppean population and communities relocating to this region from other areas of the Carpathian Basin. Lying north of this territory are the sites of the so-called Nyírség group, which maintained close ties with the groups settling south of the Körös and along the Maros rivers. The population living south of the Körös only began to colonise with varying intensity the areas north of the river from the last years of the first third of the seventh century. Political and military (as well as economic) power and regional centres are indicated by the concentrations of settlements (or, in our case, of cemeteries), weapons and precious metal finds as well as of prestige articles. Our studies indicate that neither a concentration of sites (of solitary burials or cemeteries), nor of pole-arms (spears), nor of precious metal articles indicating a regional centre can be noted in eastern Hungary during the early Avar period.
Aside from the weapons, social differences are indicated by the belt and harness ornaments found in male burials. The men buried with pressed gold belt mounts such as the men of unknown age whose graves came to light at Kunágota and Kunmadaras stood at the peak of the social hierarchy of the population living in eastern Hungary. It remains uncertain whether the burial of an area’s lord or leader can provide reliable clues regarding the location of his seat.
Discussed here are a few details of the Kunágota burial which, although relevant for the subject of this study, have not been accorded the necessary scholarly attention. Insofar as the testimony recorded at the time of its discovery can be taken at face value, the grave came to light in a deeper-lying area often inundated with water, suggesting that the man had been interred in the then dry bed of the Kovácsiházi Stream, intermittently covered with water, in an unmarked grave, probably in secret, far from the period’s settled areas. Since the recorded testimony does not mention the earring among the finds, previous efforts to identify this find are unconvincing. It seems to me that the earring mentioned in the reader’s letter can probably be identified with the two intact, semicircular, crescentic sheet gold plates of the ring-pommel sword recorded in the accessions register. The incomplete assemblage included, among others, the cut-up gold plates with scenes taken from Greek mythology that had once adorned a wooden casket made in the mid-sixth century, a crystal pendant and three gold ball pendants. The pendants of the necklace had probably been a gift deposited in the grave, as shown by several other examples. The other grave goods included a gold coin of Justinian I, the single piece that was part of a funerary assemblage in the Avar-period material. The concentration of various Byzantine articles crafted in the mid-sixth century in this assemblage is unparalleled in the Avar material of Hungary.
The Kunágota burial was a niche grave, with the remains of two partial horse burials in the shaft. These features, reflecting the Eastern European connections of the burial, are only distinctive to this population group in the Carpathian Basin, both separately and jointly. The differing traits of the finds mentioned in the above and their manufacturing date around the mid-sixth century suggest that these prestige articles had been received by one of the male members of the man interred at Kunágota, whose family originated from the Eastern European steppe, and that they had been brought to the Maros Valley from somewhere between the Don and the Lower Danube region. The numismatic, archaeological and historical record would suggest that the mid-sixth-century articles of the Kunágota burial had reached the leader of one of the population groups (perhaps the Kutrigurs) living on the Eastern European steppe as a gift from Byzantium shortly after they had been made (before 558).
1. kép. 1. Kunágota és tágabb környéke, délen a Száraz-ér kelet–nyugati szakaszával a Második Katonai Felmérés (1806–1869) térképének a részletén;
2. Kunágota belterülete a Magyar Királyság (1869–1887) térképének részletén (a Kovácsházi-ér a községet a délkeleti sarkán érte el és az északi végén hagyta el)
1.
2.
2. kép. 1. A karikás markolatvégű kard két félköríves, félhold alakú, kihajtogatott aranylemeze (LÁSZLÓ Gyula 1950 X. tábla nyomán);
2–7. A kunágotai síregyüttes 6. századi leletei:
2: rekonstrukció, 3–6: eredeti tárgyak, 7: másolat