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in: „…in nostra lingua Hringe nominant” – Tanulmányok Szentpéteri József 60. születésnapjára, Cs. Balogh, Zs. Petkes, B. Sudár, Zs. Zsidai, Editor, Katona József Müzesi, Macar Bilimler Akademisi Tarih Enstitüsü, Kecskemét, Budapest, pp.39-70, 2015
The grave 8 of the Avar cemetery from Homokrev was described about fi rst by Gyula Laszló in 1946. From among the fi nds, he reconstructed the two bone plates with meander ornaments as belt mounts. However, in my opinion, they did not belong to a belt but decorated a quiver.
No similar bone slat ornamentation can be found among the Avar bone objects, the best parallels can be found between their meander band ornamentation and that of the rectangular slat hair-grips characteristic of the middle Avar-age fi nds and the incrusted chairs of the cemetery in Zamardi.
Th e two bone plates lay across the waist, in more or less one axis. Th e former position of the slats of the Homokrev fi nd resembles that of the bone slats on the birch-bark quiver found in kurgan 58 in the Mongun taiga. Th e quiver unbound of the belt was placed on the abdomen of the dead body. Th e hook mount at the end of the left plate was used for hanging the quiver.
Narrow, ornamented bone slats are known from further six graves in the Avar age fi nds of the Carpathian Basis, which may have ornamented quivers similarly to the ones in Homokrev. Th e typical feature of these quivers is that none of them had curved brim plates, they were hung up by the support of looped hooks, no rectangle belt end or animal-head-shaped fi ttings belonged to them and there are no quiver belts ornamented with rosettes either.
For the time being, there is no data about the form and shaping of the brim of these quivers. Th e available data are not yet enough to decide whether the quivers ornamented with narrow slats, based on their from belong to the group of so called “collared” quivers, the top of which was truncated-cone-shaped, often with a lid, and only the system of their ornamentation diff ered from or were related to other quiver forms.
Among the ornamentation of quivers with bones, there are motifs which did not belong to the earliest types but appeared in the early Avar as well as in the middle Avar age.
Most of the discovery places of the quiver group are in a small geographical area, about 120 km along the Lower Tisza, they stretch close to the river between Csengele and Obecse. Several types of quivers were discovered among the Avar-age fi nds. Most of them are “collared” quivers (type 1), which have been found in diff erent varieties: ornamented with metal (Bocsa- type quivers) and carved bone plates (quivers with curved brim plates). Th e ornamentation of quivers with narrow, curved brims is an invention in the Carpathian Basis, it is not known whether they were used in the East.
Quivers ornamented with narrow slats supposedly belong to the group of “collared” quivers. Often only hanging hooks and mounts, rarely iron props seem to prove the one-time existence of quivers. Quivers of this type were not ornamented with carved slats (type 2).
Most of them were typical for graves of high-rank men buried with swords decorated with gold and silver fi ttings and were outlined on the edge of the chieftains’ quarters in the central part of the region between the Danube and the Tisza in the middle third of the 7th century. Rarely, they had iron props. Th ese quivers had a downward steadily widening form with a closed brim by eastern analogy (e.g. from Avilovka and Belozerka kurgan 31.).
Hopefully, quiver ornaments will later be found in Avar surroundings, which will clearly prove the former existence of quivers decorated with short bone slats, and will also provide data that will contribute to the reconstruction these quivers.