404 CHAPTER 9
differences.16 These elements are distributed across a broader period17 than
just the Avar Age in the Carpathian Basin and only some general functional
features can be compared with those of Avar examples. Even the means
of their transmission have not yet been clarified.18 Another problem is that
the Far East was often treated together along with Inner Asia in Hungarian
research although these regions are clearly distinct both in geography and
their culture.19
Sogdian wall paintings are well known sources of Avar archaeology in the
works of Gyula László but their use is problematic for a number of reasons:
their schematic representation, the great geographical distance, and their dif-
ferent cultural milieu. These wall paintings can be used as analogies for Early
Avar swords but only with caution; however, contemporaneous phenomena
can be treated as reflections of the international trends in weapon history.20
The archaeology of the Eastern European steppes has been better studied,
and it can offer more analogies for the Carpathian Basin, than the more remote
areas of Eurasia. The above mentioned problems are still, however, valid for
this region: weapons are generally similar but different in their specific details
and, not surprisingly, mostly weapons from closer regions and from the same
period provide the best parallels.
The interpretation of Mediterranean contacts has revealed some different
problems, like the very small number of Byzantine weapon finds. Most of the
weapons in the Mediterranean were found in Barbarian burials, and therefore
their weapons can be taken to reflect the weaponry of their gentile army,21 for
example in Italy, where most of the weapons were found in Lombard burials.22
In spite of all these problems, a continuous influx of Mediterranean weapons
into the Carpathian Basin can be observed from the 6th to the 9th century.
Western influences continuously reached the Avar-age Carpathian Basin
from the beginning of this era until its end. Most of the artefacts of western
16 Korea of the Silla period (Ito 1971), Japan in the Kofun period and China during the Tang
period (Koch 2006).
17 Both the stirrups and ring-pommel swords appeared much earlier, during the 4th century
in China (Koch 1998a).
18 while the stirrup and ring-pommel swords are probably of Chinese origin, the P-shaped
suspension loops likely reached China from the West.
19 Bóna 1980; Bóna 1984a; Simon 1991.
20 However, it is important to note that all of these paintings were made well after the
appearance of the Avars in the Carpathian Basin, during the 7–8th centuries, whilst the
wall paintings of Afrasiab are dated to 648 (Mode 1993, 200).
21 See chapter VII.2.
22 See the openwork spearheads of the Early phase in Transdanubia.