Inlaid Buckles and Plates from the Great Migration Period Showing Relief Scroll Decorations: Byzantium and Barbaricum

Abstract

This article examines the inlaid artefacts with garnets decorated with carved spirals, which originate from Kerch and date from the late stage of the Great Migration Period. According to B. Arrhenius, carved gemstones occurring in Europe in the Hunnic and Post-­­Hunnic Periods were the products of Mediterranean workshops, primarily of Constantinople. This stone-­­working technology requires specific skills; the barbarians did not have this technology in the period in question. The finds from Kerch were possibly imported from Constantinople, as the Cimmerian Bosporos was closely connected with the Eastern Roman Empire in political and economic respect. However, it is still possible that the artefacts featuring the carved designs in question were produced in the Western Mediterranean workshops. The first thing to meet the eye is the appearance of a significant number of metal ware showing comparable spiral decorations in the Barbaricum in the said period. The artefacts showing the most similar style concentrated in Eastern Europe; there also are the finds of the kind from Central Europe and southern Scandinavia. It is very likely that metal objects with spiral decorations, prestigious in themselves and in some cases undoubtedly originated from “chieftain” complexes or the centres of power, imitated even more prestigious artefacts featuring carved garnets, like those found in Kerch. If it was the case, the Central European and Scandinavian finds possibly imitated not only Byzantine ware, but also certain ornaments from the Western Mediterranean, for example from Ravenna. Be that as it may, it seems that the rather wide distribution of metal artefacts featuring two-scroll spiral decorations indicates a significant influence of the elite Mediterranean / Byzantine culture on the barbarian elite, which also occurred in other elements of the “princely” civilization of the European Barbaricum in the fifth and sixth centuries.