Bácsalmás - In the East, in the West…

In preparation for the construction of a waterfowl farm, archaeological monitoring and, later, a preventive excavation were conducted at the site Bácsalmás–Bokodi-út between April and September 2023, bringing to light the remains of a Sarmatian settlement and an Avar cemetery. The extensive landscaping works disturbed the better part of the area of the former agricultural cooperative.
The fieldwork yielded 88 Avar graves, representing a part of an Avar cemetery, in a strip of land stretching NE–SW and covering about 8,000 m2. The East and West in the title refer to the two distinct grave groups of the cemetery. Most burials were NW–SE-oriented, simple shaft graves; the long walls of some had shoulders. Traces of grave structures (depressions of the support structure of the funerary beds) were observed in about two-thirds of them, and some also featured horizontal grooves (nests for the planks of the funerary bed) in the long walls.
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The observed traces of diverse grave structures
The deceased were usually laid to rest stretched on their back; in about a third of the cases, the stretched arms were pressed tightly to the body, indicating that the body was wrapped in a shroud. The single dual burial attests to a sad event: a newborn – likely her child – was placed at the feet of an adult woman.
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Dual burial of an adult woman and a newborn
More than half of the graves were disturbed, likely back in the Avar Period. The grave assemblages comprise items given to the deceased for the afterlife. The mortuary clothing of sixteen men included belts adorned with metal mounts and fittings, crafted with advanced skills and strive to produce ornate pieces, as reflected by the ones decorated in the gryphon-and-tendril-style. The belts often had bone or iron buckles and bone suspension pieces, with several ornate pieces among them. Earrings were often found around the skulls of women, while the braid rings in the graves of men attest to their one-time hairdos. Only the purse locks and buckles remained of the one-time purses, in which diverse tools, iron objects, flints, and whetstones were kept. Finds indicating the presence of armed men are scarce: a butt-axe, some iron arrowheads, and the bone plates of bows.
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Belt set with gryphon-and-tendril-style mounts and fittings (Feature SNR 250)
Based on the recovered find material, the cemetery was used from the second half of the 7th to the early 9th century AD. The eastern group comprises the graves of the older, while the western the features of the younger horizon.
by Bence Kolonics