Coalescing traditions—Coalescing people: Community formation in Pannonia after the decline of the Roman Empire

Abstract

The decline of the Roman rule caused significant political instability and led to the emergence of various 'Barbarian' powers. While the names of the involved groups appeared in written sources, it is largely unknown how these changes affected the daily lives of the people during the 5 th century AD. Did late Roman traditions persist, did new customs emerge, and did both amalgamate into new cultural expressions? A prime area to investigate these population and settlement historical changes is the Carpathian Basin (Hungary). Particularly, we studied archaeological and anthropological evidence, as well as radiogenic and stable isotope ratios of strontium, carbon, and nitrogen of human remains from 96 graves at the cemetery of Mö zs-Icsei dűlő. Integrated data analysis suggests that most members of the founder generation at the site exhibited burial practises of late Antique traditions, even though they were heterogeneous regarding their places of origin and dietary habits. Furthermore, the isotope data disclosed a nonlocal group of people with similar dietary habits. According to the archaeological evidence, they joined the community a few decades after the founder generation and followed mainly foreign traditions with artificial skull modification as their most prominent characteristic. Moreover, individuals with modified skulls and late Antique grave attributes attest to deliberate cultural amalgamation, whereas burials of largely different isotope ratios underline the recipient habitus of the community. The integration of archaeological and bioarchaeological information at the individual level discloses the complex coalescence of people and traditions during the 5 th century.

Human mobility in a Bronze Age Vatya ‘urnfield’ and the life history of a high-status woman

“…Most parts of the Great Hungarian Plain are covered with Quaternary, loose, clastic sediments deposited by alluvial events from the Danube and Tisza rivers and their tributaries [107,108] In a recent publication, Giblin and collaborators [109] considered the overall geology of the Danubian-Carpathian basin, presenting a first 'isoscape' based on a limited, but significant set of data. Since then, other research projects have enriched the biologically available strontium baselines [110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117]. We collated all the published isotopic signatures and generated a new georeferenced 'isoscape', which differentiates the various baseline sources, namely modern plants, archaeological bone/dentine, archaeological fauna, river/mineral waters (Fig 3).…”

“…Since no animal bones have been recorded from the cemetery so far, we integrated published baselines with human bone, dentine, and 0-5-year-old infant tooth enamel from Szigetszentmiklós-Ü rgehegy and from the nearby cemetery of Százhalombatta-Belső-Ú jföldek as further support for local 87 Sr/ 86 Sr signatures. We concentrated on children's teeth because several larger, previously published series of Sr isotope data confirm significantly less variable 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios among the teeth of children than among those of adult individuals; as young children are unlikely to have migrated, their values usually reflect the local signatures [45,46,71,72,114,117,121].…”

“…The conical shaped bowls with inverted rims that are ornamented with larger horizontal knobs is an invention of this period (nn. 117,317,515). Next to the cone-headed pin from grave n. 224 that can be dated to this phase, there are other non-period specific bronze objects like buttons, spiral tubes, spectacle pendants that came to light from graves of all periods.…”

A hun korszak a Kárpát-medencében • The Hunnic Period in the Carpathian Basin

“…Mely, a forrásokban felbukkanó népcsoportokkal és eseményekkel lehet a 4. század végétől megjelenő új leletanyagot összefüggésbe hozni? Az újabb megközelítések -a római-barbár dichotómia előtérbe helyezése helyett -az 5. század átalakuló társadalmát, a népesség körében lejátszódó akkulturációs és integrációs folyamatokat, a provincia kevert lakosságának életmódját és "túlélési" stratégiáit, és az egyes települések-életközösségek egyedi sorsát kutatják (például: Vida, 2011;Tomka, 2015;Knipper et al, 2020).…”

Detection of diagenetic alteration in bones and teeth for migration and dietary studies — a combined FTIR and C-N–O-Sr isotope study on tenth century CE cemeteries in northern and northeastern Hungary

“…Since the pioneering research of the 1980s (see Ambrose 1990), hundreds of studies have used stable carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen isotope measurements, as well as 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio analyses of human bone and dental samples to decipher the migration histories and dietary habits of ancient societies. The Carpathian Basin has been the crossroad for peoples' migrations from the east and south to the west for thousands of years, making it an excellent topic of several stable oxygen isotope and 87 Sr/ 86 Sr composition studies (Giblin 2009;Gerling et al 2012;Giblin et al 2013;Alt et al 2014;Noche-Dowdy 2015;Giblin and Yerkes 2016;Hakenbeck et al 2017;Gamarra et al 2018;Gugora et al 2018;Knipper et al 2020;Depaermentier et al 2020;. Ancient Hungarian tribes settled the Carpathian Basin in 895/896 CE, bringing with them the genetic and cultural characteristics from several boundary regions between Europe and Asia, while also adopting habits of the local inhabitants (e.g., Avars and Slavs) (Fóthi et al 2020, and references therein).…”