Materiale și Cercetări Arheologice (Jan 2022)
Beads found in men’s graves from the 10th and 11th centuries in the Carpathian Basin. Analysis and overview of the gender-related object types of the period
Abstract
In early medieval societies, it is not only social differences that are expressed by the grave goods, but also genders. If we associate the 10th century finds with gender, the general picture is that women were buried with jewellery and men with weapons. Beads are also typically a type of artefact that is mainly associated with female artefacts, although the male burials currently under discussion reflect the fact that there was no regularity by which they could not have been included in male graves. Thus, in the first part of this study, we will seek to answer the question of whether it is indeed possible to classify finds according to their recovery from male or female graves, or the situation is much more complex. According to our current data, only a small number of beaded male graves dated to the 10th – 11th centuries were found in the Carpathian Basin : 36 graves from a total of 28 burial sites. Based on the beads found, men’s graves are not characterized by the wearing of long strings of beads. In male burials, there are usually 1– 3 beads and very rarely 4 – 5. Examining the beaded male graves of the Carpathian Basin, two chronological groups emerge : 1. Includes weapons‑horse burials with richer grave goods. These may have been buried mainly in the first half of the 10th century, but before the end of the 10th century at the latest. 2. A group of beaded men with more modest grave goods, dating as early as the mid‑ or rather mid‑late 10th century. The S‑ended ribbed lockring, found in Szegvár, suggests that the custom may have been practiced as late as the early 12th century. But by this time, beads might have been placed in burials with far fewer, or even in the absence of other grave goods. Two trends emerge in the types of beads. One is that only monochrome beads are placed in graves. The other is when they just put beads with eye ornamentation in these graves. In contrast to other ornamental beads, eye beads may have been used in men’s burials because they had a protective function, protecting the wearer from the evil eye. Given the wide distribution of the eye beads and their long period of use, it seems that the superstition of the evil eye was known among the conquering Hungarians.
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