# Bijelo Brdo culture

The Bijelo Brdo culture, or Bjelo-Brdo culture, is a medieval archaeological culture flourishing in the 10th and 12th centuries in Central Europe. It represents a synthesis of Pannonian-Middle Danubian post-Avar culture existing in the territory (in present-day Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia) before the Hungarian conquest and those introduced in the Carpathian Basin by the conquering Hungarians in the early 10th century.

## Name

It is named after an archeological site, a medieval graveyard found in the village of Bijelo Brdo, Croatia, near Osijek, which was first excavated in 1895. The name of the culture is attributed to Lubor Niederle (1921). By 2021, the term is mostly used in Croatia (due to close cultural analogies and to differentiate archaeological material in continental Croatia from the old Croatian-Dalmatian culture), and in Serbia, Slovakia and Romania, but mostly out of use in Hungary, as in "the last few decades, a tendency can be noted to avoid the use of older terms containing the names of regions or sites which suggest the place of origin of a given archaeological phenomenon, and to replace them with chronological or historical designations".

### Definition

The existence of the Bijelo Brdo culture itself is matter of debate, as the conception of the archaeological culture in the late Early Middle Ages-High Middle Ages is outdated, as well its chronology, the question of continuity and discontinuity, ethnic identification and interpretation. Its vast area of findings from Eastern Alps, Eastern Adriatic, Moravia and border of Ukraine, over several distinctive medieval principalities and ethnic groups, is opposing the traditional approach of culture-historical archaeology through which lens is researched. Recently archaeologist Krešimir Filipec negated it "as an archaeological culture and believing that it is simply a fashion of the time and that it should be given a new and neutral name". Milica Radišić as an alternative proposed "culture of the Árpád period".

## Geography

The basic territory of Bijelo Brdo culture included parts of present-day Hungary (including Transylvania), southern Slovakia, and part of the Serbian northern region of Vojvodina. Outside the core area, V. V. Sedov considered the existence of local cultural varieties which were influenced by Bijelo Brdo culture. They are also understood as Bijelo Brdo-types, or belonging to the Bijelo Brdo culture area. The largest site in the Carpathian Basin is from Majs-Udvar in the Hungarian part of Baranya.
Archaeologists often use term "Bijelo Brdo culture" for early medieval culture in Lower Pannonia (between Sava, Drava, Mura and Danube rivers). Its influence was present since the 10th century in Carantania in Slovenia, and Kingdom of Croatia (as well northern and western parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina).

## Dating

Zdeněk Váňa divided the culture into three phases, "old" (975–1025), "middle" (1025–1075) and "late" (1075–1200), Jochen Giesler greatly contributed to its stratigraphy, chronology and typology, dividing it into three phases (Hungarian, and Bijelo Brdo I and II). Later research concluded that the initial phase began in the 9th century, and end of the late phase could have been in the middle-13th or early 14th century. Željko Tomičić considered "Proto-Bijelo Brdo" phase before the 10th century, a "transitional" phase (900–965), proper "I" with early and late phase (965–1030), "II" also with early and late phase (1030–1100), and "III" (1100–1250/1300).
In the Lower Pannonia some examples include largest site in Croatia in Vukovar-Lijeva Bara from the 10-11th century (with over 400 graves), bracelet from Vinkovci from the end of the 10th-early 11th century, findings in Podravina and Northern Croatia from the 11th century.
In the "late" phase the decline of pagan customs should be associated with the rise of Christianity and Hungarian-Slavic assimilation. Some scholars consider that the culture's cemeteries disappeared, at least in Transylvania, around 1100, most probably not independently of laws adopted under Kings Ladislaus I and Coloman of Hungary which prescribed the burial of dead in graveyards developed near churches.

## Characteristics

The culture's burial grounds don't have kurgans, but feature inhumation, and consist of a dozen to a hundred graves. The burials almost completely lack military equipment. Rarely and only in the initial phase were found horse burials. Female dress accessories, including "jewellery of plaited wire, two-piece sheetwork pendants, snake-head bracelets and S-shaped temple-reings", are the most characteristic items of the culture. The S-shaped temple rings were previously characteristic feature of the Sclaveni of Prague-Korchak culture. South of the Sava river, "assemblages attributed to the 'Bjelo Brdo culture' are easily recognizable by specific female dress accessories, especially 'beaded' earrings with grape-like pendants evidently imitating granulated ornaments of ninth-century specimens". The analogies were also found on the Eastern Adriatic coast. In the Lower Pannonia, around 1000 CE also appear the so-called "Volyn-Kiev"-type earrings, and "cast crescent-shaped earrings made of perforated type variants, also with luxury filigree models".

## Ethnic identification

It is considered that the "rarity of weapons and the conspicuous marking of female burials with multiple sets of dress accessories suggest that this was a population very different from that which buried its deceased in horseman burials". However, the "exact identity of the population using the cemeteries of the 'Bjelo Brdo culture' has been the subject of much debate". Since the beginning of the scolarly research was thought that the Bijelo Brdo, and other poorer gravesites in early medieval Hungary, were Slavic and that only the rich horse-warrior burials were of Hungarian conquerors. This view started to be challenged in the 1940s and 1950s, by archaeologists Zdeněk Váňa and Béla Szőke and Hungarian scholars, who see the poorer burials as Hungarian commoners, and not as Slavs. However, other scholars consider that such conclusion is not well substantinated because of which is not generally accepted. V. V. Sedov consider's that the culture is natural continuation of the pre-Hungarian early Slavic culture in the Carpathian Basin, but cannot be refuted later existence of Hungarian commoners who abandoned nomadic lifestyle. Recently, Željko Tomičić also came to the conclusion that the culture's proto-types predate the arrival of the Hungarians.