ONCE AGAIN ON BOW FIBULAE OF THE “PIETROASELE TYPE” (WERNER’S CLASS I F)
ONCE AGAIN ON BOW FIBULAE OF THE “PIETROASELE TYPE” (WERNER’S CLASS I F)

Summary/Abstract: Almost thirty years ago, at the climax of “Orientalism” in Avar archaeology, Csanád Bálint drew attention to the significance of the so-called “Slavic” bow fibulae for the archaeology of the early Avar Age. According to him, such fibulae were not the material correlates of Slavic ethnicity, but elements of a widespread East European fashion adopted by members of various ethnic groups at about the same time. Tongue-in-cheek, Bálint noted that only twenty years after producing the first classification of East European bow fibulae and attaching the label “Slavic” to that class of artifacts, Joachim Werner was already moving away from that interpretation linking a particular sub-group of “Slavic” bow fibulae found in Ukraine to the Avars in Pannonia. To be sure, Werner was still convinced that the main factor responsible for the spread of such dress accessories to areas as far apart as Ukraine and Greece was the migration of the Slavs. Werner’s “Slavic” bow fibulae were Slavic because, unlike the Germanic Tracht, such fibulae were supposedly worn singly, not in pairs. Moreover, Werner argued, “Slavic” bow fibulae were more likely to be found in association with cremations, the supposedly standard burial rite of the early Slavs, than with inhumations.

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