Avar-Age Polearms and Edged Weapons. Classification, Typology, Chronology and Technology

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CHAPTER 6


Origins and Cultural Contacts


1 The East and the Steppe Lands


Contact with the east was emphasised in the research of Avar archaeology


from its very beginnings but mostly without any definition of ‘Orient’ or pre-


cision as to what exactly was meant by eastern contact. The archaeology of


the ‘Migration Period’ of the Carpathian Basin usually uses this term for the


steppes, not recognising that the steppes region is not historically uniform,


geographically nor culturally. Later some authors also included the Middle


East (including Sassanian Iran), Transoxiana and the Far East, under the term


‘Orient’, many of which were also deeply influenced by the steppes, despite


being basically settled civilisations. The term Orient, however, is a deriva-


tive of the 19th century perspective of ‘orientalism’, and is the opposite of


European.1 As well as these eastern contacts, there were also connections with


the Eurasian Steppes, the oasis civilisations of Central Asia (like Transoxiana


or Khorasan),2 and with Sassanian and Early Islamic Iran, all of which should


rightly be addressed separately.


Research on the eastern origins of Avar material culture was much empha-


sised in Hungarian archaeology from its beginnings, partly as a consequence of


the eastern origins of the Hungarians themselves and the national mythology


constructed around it, and also because according to written sources the Avars


arrived in the Carpathian Basin from Inner Asia, chased by the Ancient Turks,


and as a result artefact types of Inner Asian origin were usually dated to the


first generation of Avars in the Carpathian Basin.


The study of the steppes in Hungarian archaeology started with the expedi-


tions of Béla Pósta,3 whose work was continued by Gyula László4 and Nándor


Fettich.5 After World War II and the political changes that saw Hungary


1 This approach originated from both European romanticism and colonialism, and regarded as
‘Orient’ everything that lay beyond the borders of Christian Europe (Said 2000).
2 In Russian literature there is a clear distinction between ‘Центральная’ and ‘Средняя Азия’,
the latter meaning the area south of the Sir-Darya river, which is mainly characterised by
settled oasis civilisations.
3 Pósta 1905.
4 László 1955.
5 Fettich 1926a, 1–14; Fettich 1937; Fettich 1951.

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