Pages: 93-103

Belt sets with openwork ornaments compose a small but outstanding part of the material culture of the western Balts of the 7 th c. An analysis of this phenomenon has brought us to the following conclusions:
1. Given the sophisticated character of manufacturing, a few belt sets, elements of rich burial complexes, represent elements of the social elite’s attire in the local multiethnic society.
2. In the 7 th century, the Mazury happened to be the home place for separate groups of Avar and Slavic cultural communities from the Middle Danube. It was them who brought the Byzantine tradition of making belt sets with an openwork decor to the south-western border of the Baltic States in the mid-7 th century.
3. The openwork decor on the Mazurian belt sets, initially, performed an apotropaic function (in the middle of the second half of the 7 th century), containing Christian or Balts’ traditional cult symbols. Such symbolic compositions were considered socially prestigious by the customers who clearly imitated Merovingian nobility.
4. In the late 7 th and at the turn of the 7 th—8 th centuries, Mazurian belts that had already lost their former importance as amulets, were found in the military burial complexes on the shore of the Vistula Lagoon and on the territory of the present day
Lithuanian coast, among other trophies acquired by the Prussians as a result of a hypothetical military clash with the inhabitants of the Mazury.

Keywords: Mazury Lake District, early Middle Ages, belt sets, Balts, Avars, Slavs, Germans, Byzantine traditions

Information about author:

Vladimir Kulakov (Moscow, Russian Federation). Doctor of Historical Sciences. Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dmitry Ulyanov St., 19, Moscow, 117036, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]