Jewellery with star-shaped pendants

This study examines the chronological horizon of jewellery featuring star-shaped pendants used between the 7th and 9th centuries AD. The typological uniformity of the early variants with plain loops, along with their distribution within Pannonia in the Carpathian Basin, can be effectively understood within the framework of late antique and Byzantine communication networks. The variants datable from the second half of the 7th century to the first half (?) of the 9th century connect the Lower Danube region with the territory of the Bohemian- and Morava-Basin via the eastern half of the Carpathian Basin; notably, they are absent west of the Danube as well as in the Western Balkans. Finally, the latest variants, which also emerge within a Carolingian peripheral cultural milieu (first half of the 9th century), can once again be interpreted within a Pannonian and Western Balkan network of relations, whereas the variants with wide lunulae cease to exist parallel to this late phase. Based on its characteristic way of being worn and its spatial distribution, this jewellery type can be identified as a marker of identity for certain groups. Depending on the geographical extent of this artefact type, these groups played a heightened role in the communication network extending from the Bohemian Basin to the Lower Danube region. Together with the associated mode of dress, it may be suggested that these objects signal culturally distinct communities within the Avar environment that actively maintained interregional interactions. Meanwhile, this network of relations cannot be separated from the late period of the Avar Khaganate's existence (approx. the ‘long 8th century’). Consequently, traces of a network of relations can be identified that is characteristically Avar-period yet carries unique features from the perspective of Avar culture, and which temporarily became a defining route of communication between the Eastern Balkans and the Moravian and Bohemian Basins.