New Results and Ideas of the Archaeological Research on Early Hungarian History in the Eurasian Context

Abstract

As Early Hungarian history is a resource-poor research area, archaeology, a field of science with rapidly increasing resource material, is of paramount importance. It is important to emphasize that in the case of archaeology, there is also a significant expansion in research methods, mainly thanks to the bioarchaeological studies that have started with great momentum. In recent years, the most significant archaeological results of Early Hungarian history were the explosive increase in the number of Subbotsi-type sites associated with Etelköz accommodations in the region of the Dniester River. There are now 10–12 sites along the central flow of the Dnieper River. The relations with the neighbouring areas, mainly with the northern, Slavic regions, and with the Byzantine culture in Crimea are well reflected here. In addition to the chronology of the material, its nature is also explicitly consistent with the image drawn by Muslim sources of the 9th-century ancestors of the Hungarians. Further to the east, the Volga elbow in Samara and the wider area of the Southern Urals remain the ones that show the most connections regarding Hungarian ethnic genesis. As a working hypothesis, we can say that the earliest archaeological traces of the ancestors of the Hungarians can be assumed east of the Ural Mountains, in the eastern neighbourhood of the Ural region of Chelyabinsk. A group of people here presumably set off westwards in the early 9th century. In a short time, this community appeared on the left bank of the Volga, and its accommodation area extended to the border of Volga Bulgaria. After that, part of it remained along the Kama River. The other group migrated westwards before the 830s, and settled in the northern foreland of the Black Sea.