Mélykút - The Avars of the Cold War

One of the most remarkable Avar find assemblages in the exhibition was recovered during recent systematic surveys carried out at a beautiful venue. The site was identified on a satellite image, where blurred soil stains, perhaps archaeological features, could be seen. József Dömötör and Zsolt Szabó surveyed the area with metal detectors.
After the first (unsuccessful) survey, they picked up a single signal and found the first object: a tendril-decorated braid ring in pure gold! After that, they found many more metal artefacts, one more beautiful than the other. Besides a few Bronze Age and 10th–11th-century AD pieces, the bulk of the assemblage was Avar. They recovered several more gold items (rings and sheets), gryphon-and-tendril-style ornate belt mounts, and other high-quality metal objects.
To familiarise ourselves with the stratigraphic conditions of the area, we explored it with two small trenches. To our surprise, we did not reach the subsoil even at a depth of 1.60 m in either of them. After cleaning the profiles, a sharp line could be detected at a depth of roughly 1 m, revealing that the land there had been filled by an about that thick soil layer.
Next to the findspots, a Cold War bunker was found; only a big concrete platform remained of it, but the former entrance and some communication trenches could clearly be identified. These lands are in the border zone, and they have been spotted with dozens of other military facilities forming an extensive bunker network.
All finds likely got to their respective findspots with the many cubic metres of soil dug up and dumped around in context with the construction of the bunker network; thus, all of them were found in a secondary position. Whether the earthworks were related to the establishment of the nearby bunker or some other in the vicinity, one cannot tell; however, based on the recovered find material, they certainly destroyed at least six to eight exceptional graves of an 8th-century AD elite Avar cemetery.