page_title: Banat in the Middle Ages
section_title: Towards integration (c. 900–c.1003 or 1030)
hierarchical_section_title: Banat in the Middle Ages / Kingdom of Hungary / Towards integration (c. 900–c.1003 or 1030)
caption_attribution_description: English: Duchies of Ahtum and Sermon in the 11th century.Српски / srpski: војводства Ахтума и Сермона у 11. веку
context_page_description: The Middle Ages in the Banat started around 900. Around that time, Duke Glad ruled Banat, according to the Gesta Hungarorum. Archaeological finds and 10th-century sources evidence that Magyars settled in the lowlands in the early 10th century, but the survival of Avar, Slav and Bulgar communities can also be documented. A local chieftain, Ajtony, converted to Eastern Orthodoxy around 1000, but his attempts to control the delivery of salt on the Mureș River brought him into conflict with Stephen I of Hungary. Ajtony died fighting against the royal army in the first decades of the 11th century. His realm was transformed into a county of the Kingdom of Hungary. Counties were the most prominent units of royal administration.
  Featuring items of the "Bijelo Brdo culture" can be detected in the lowlands from around 975. Artefacts from the Byzantine Empire or imitating Byzantine objects were found along the Danube, and in the Banat Mountains. Pagan burial rites disappeared by the end of the 11th century, evidencing the local inhabitants' conversion to Christianity.
context_section_description: A new burial horizon (documented at about forty places in the lowlands) appeared in Banat in the late 9th century. Small cemeteries and solitary burials feature it, showing that the nearby communities lived in small groups. The deceased were buried together with the skull or legs of their horses and with saddles, stirrups or other horse equipments. Sabers, swords, composite bows, quivers or other weapons, and ornamented belts were also placed in the graves of warriors. In women's graves, hairpins, earrings of the so-called "Saltovo" type bracelets, pendants, collar ornaments and buttons were found. The earliest graves of this "steppe burial horizon" were found near the confluence of the Tisza and Mureș. They yielded no artefacts of Byzantine provenance. From the 930s, artifacts which either represented a new style emerging in the Carpathian Basin, or were copied after Byzantine patterns were placed in the graves. The "steppe burial horizon" can archaeologically be detected till the last decades of the 11th century.  
  There are about a dozen 10th-century cemeteries with burial assemblages that differ from the "steppe burial horizon". The north-south orientation of a child's grave at Uivar and the deposition of a Byzantine coin in the child's mouth imply the presence of Bulgars. The deposition of coins in the mouth ("Charon's obol") was also documented in 10th-century graves found at Orșova and Deta. The "Köttlach-type" artefacts found at Deta have been attributed to Slavs from Carinthia, but other finds (including ornamented belts) may also indicate a multicultural community, using imported goods. Burial assemblages yielding artifacts from the Balkan Peninsula have been documented in about a dozen cemeteries, especially in the southern region. These isolated graves and small cemeteries may show the presence of a distinct ethnic group, or prove commercial contacts with the Balkan Peninsula. Both the custom of "Charon's obol" and the graves of the "South Danubian burial horizon" were attributed to the Vlachs (whose presence in Banat is mentioned in later sources), but neither hypotheses have been universally accepted. Historians, who say that the Vlachs were present in the region already in the 9th century,  propose that the Vlachs either migrated to Bulgaria or fled to the Banat Mountains after the arrival of the Hungarians.
  Around 950, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus recorded that Hungarians inhabited the region to the north of the Iron Gates. He mentioned five rivers—the Timiș, the "Toutis", the Mureş, the Criş and the Tisza—that flow through the Hungarians' territory. Medieval settlements named after Hungarian tribes confirm that Hungarian communities settled in the lowlands already in the 10th century. Rivers, mountains and settlements bearing Hungarian names in the Middle Ages also show the presence of Hungarian-speaking groups. The Byzantine historian  John Skylitzes wrote of a Hungarian chieftain, Gylas, who was baptized in Constantinople in the early 950s. On this occasion, a Greek monk, Hierotheus was ordained "bishop of Turkey" (that is bishop of Hungary) to accompany Gylas back to his homeland. Bishop Hierotheus "converted many from the barbaric fallacy to Christianity", according to Skylitzes. Traditional scholarly consensus holds that Gylas ruled Transylvania (to the east of Banat), but the concentration of Byzantine coins minted between 948 and 959 at the confluence of the Tisza and the Mureş may indicate that Gylas's seat was located in Banat. The only 10th-century pectoral cross (a small copper cross) in the region was discovered at Deta.
   
  A new cultural synthesis, the so-called "Bijelo Brdo culture", emerged in the Carpathian Basin in the middle of the 10th century. Lock rings with S-shaped ends were its featuring items, but typical objects of the "steppe horizon" also survived, and the graves also yielded artefacts made after Byzantine patterns. The first cemeteries of this horizon, with their graves arranged in rows, appeared around 975, especially in the northwestern lowlands. In the large "Bijelo 
caption: Ajtony's realm (often mentioned as "voivodeship" in Romanian historiography)
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