ABSTRACT
The goldsmiths satisfied the specific needs of the Avars in their own highly individual way. For century’s historians and archaeologists believed that the same ethnographic model that is applied to the Kirghiz and Kalmuck peoples, who in modern times have found themselves reduced to extreme poverty, could be applied to the Avars. The immediate influence of Byzantium on the work of Avar goldsmiths assumed a very different form after 630. Again after 670, following a transitory upswing in the fortunes of Byzantium, it took an even less positive form. The Avar empire, organized on lines similar to those of Central Asian and Persian models, had an abundance of Oriental craftsmen. The sole complete set of Byzantine women's jewellery came to the Carpathian basin only after the Avar period. Large, specifically Avar examples of the Inota-Szentendre type were, however, found at 18 sites, weighing 13-15, 17-18 and 24-26 grams.
