THE OLD HUNGARIAN HORSEMEN NECROPOLIS IN LEVICE-GENA

• Authors: Nevizansky G.
• Languages of publication: SK

Abstracts

EN

The most northern Old Hungarian big-family burial place at the lower river Hron basin is situated not far from the original flow of the Perec brook. Thirteen inhumation graves were revealed there, two of them with the remains of the younger stallions. The graves were arranged in two rows in the N-S axis. The horseman graves were situated at the dominant place of a sand dune, in the middle of the second row. Apart from one infant burial, others were of the mature individuals. From the weapons only the arrowheads were found. The graves of the buried women included jewellery and the clothing ornaments above all. In the male burials the articles of a daily use together with the weapons were found. Two female skulls bore features of a symbolic trepanation. In two cases the basalt stones were revealed nearby a skeleton. In the richest horseman grave with a female burial, the components of the horse harness were placed together with the silver pentagonal plates from a front cantle, the rivets with a semi globular head and cast openwork square and S-shaped mounts that were interpreted as the hole-guards were buried. The silver square mounts decorated a caftan. A horseman interred in another grave probably participated in a war intervention into Italy somewhere between 937-947, where four silver denarii of Hugo of Provence and Lothar II. (931-945) came from. Some portion of the artifacts found at the burial place under study is of the East-European origin unambiguously. The cast rectangular mount with openwork hole from a Jumsk-type belt has numerous analogies from the 6th-8th centuries at the area of Altai as well as in the steppe and forest-steppe zone of Eastern Europe. The necropolis in Levice-Gena was founded somewhere in the first third of the 10th century by the first generation of a newly coming ethnics into the Carpathian basin. Majority of the graves, however, are dated to the second third of the 10th century, when burying was stopped. At the site also the settlement finds dated to the Late Bronze Age and to the 10th-11th centuries (remains of a hut floor and a refuse pit) were excavated. The paper includes also a complete annotated list of 14 older burial places or the grave finds from the 10th and incipient 11th centuries that were revealed in the lower Hron basin.

Keywords

EN

HORSEMAN GRAVES; OLD HUNGARIAN NECROPOLIS (10TH C.)

Discipline

• ARCHAEOLOGY: ARCHAEOLOGY

• Publisher: Slovak Academy of Sciences, Archaeological Institute
• Journal: Slovenská archeológia (Slovak Archaeology)
• Year: 2006
• Volume: 54
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 285-328
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Nevizansky G.

• G. Nevizansky, Archeologicky ustav SAV, Akademicka 2, SK-949 21 Nitra, Slovak Republic

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

07SKAAAA02174600