BEMERKUNGEN ZUM GEPIDISCHEN CORPUS
NOTES ON THE GEPID CORPUS

Summary/Abstract: The idea of the publication of the Gepid cemeteries in Hungary was conceived about 25 years ago and the drawing of the finds recovered during the recent excavations started in 1985 (Szolnok-Szanda, Kishomok, Ártánd, Biharkeresztes, etc.). Finally, two volumes were edited but the Ártánd and the Biharkeresztes cemeteries (Kisfarkasdomb and Nagyfarkasdomb), which stood in the full glare of international publicity, were omitted. On Kisfarkasdomb, the author unearthed 25 graves in 1966 and a further one in 1971 so he finds it fair to compensate for the debt of 40 years. The burial customs observed in the cemetery (S–N and exceptionally 3 W–E orientations of the graves, artificial cranial deformations and weapons placed in the graves of women) and certain types of the finds, the brooches (mostly simple ones, with inverted foot), the buckles (among them two gilded silver Kerbschnittschnalle), the 11 vessels found in the cemetery (mostly copies of provincial Roman vessels), the beads (characteristic discoid amber beads), a few spears, spindle whorls, a nomadic metal mirror, and a two-sided bone comb suggest that the cemetery was opened at the end of the 4th century before the Hun period and it was used all through the Hun period. From a historical aspect, it is only the Gepid ethnicity that could use the cemetery within the given chronological frames, so the cemetery plays a key role in the determination of the early phase of the Gepid legacy.

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