Lakitelek. Avars in Hungaricum Park

Starting with the spring of 2018, a team from the Katona József Museum in Kecskemét monitored the construction works in the territory of the former Népfőiskola ([People's Academy], today Hungarikum Liget [Hungaricum Park]) because former field surveys had identified a Sarmatian settlement there. Therefore, in the summer of the same year, it came as a surprise when pale grey soil stains of graves appeared in the bright yellow sand subsoil during earthworks related to the building of a water reservoir. The graves proved to be the final resting places of an Avar community who lived in the area a few centuries after the Sarmatians.
Three graves of a man and two women, respectively, were unearthed in 2018. They wore earrings and bead jewellery and were given their personal utensils (knives and spindle whorls) for the afterlife. Besides, the men wore two belts fastened with iron buckles. The recovered animal bones are the remains of food offerings; one of the women was also given an egg, the shell of which was found next to one of her hands. Regrettably, one of the women’s graves was plundered already in the Avar Period.
Fieldwork continued in the area of the cemetery in February 2019, revealing five more graves (of a child, three women, and a man, respectively). They also wore jewellery (earrings, a bead necklace, bracelets, and a braid ring) and had their personal equipment (knives and a spindle whorl) buried with them; their garments were fastened with metal buckles. Based on the positions of the discovered animal bones, the food offerings were placed into the graves next to the left lower legs of the deceased. The imprints of coffins and other wooden grave structures could also be observed. Luckily, neither grave was looted, and we could recover gold earrings from two women's burials.
The eight NW–SE or W–E oriented graves of the unearthed cemetery part were arranged in three small clusters. Based on the find material, the cemetery was established in the Middle Avar Period in the second half of the 7th century AD and remained in use in the Late Avar Period in the 8th century AD. The most important artefacts recovered are some spherical pendant and bead pendant gold earrings, exquisitely beautiful even in their incomplete state, which are also on display. We presume that more graves are hidden in the adjacent plots.