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 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. By 2021, the term is mostly used in Croatia, 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is matter of debate, as the conception of the archaeological culture in the late Early Middle Ages-High Middle Ages is outdated, as well its chronology, the question of continuity and discontinuity, ethnic identification and interpretation.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, 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. Its influence was present since the 10th century in Carantania in Slovenia, and Kingdom of Croatia.
Dating
Zdeněk Váňa divided the culture into three phases, "old", "middle" and "late", Jochen Giesler greatly contributed to its stratigraphy, chronology and typology, dividing it into three phases. 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, proper "I" with early and late phase, "II" also with early and late phase, and "III".In the Lower Pannonia some examples include largest site in Croatia in Vukovar-Lijeva Bara from the 10-11th century, 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.