In 2015 and 2016, a reconnaissance study have been performed on a fortified hillfort in Lipnik, located between Sandomierz and Opatów, which had been discovered in 2015. Neither remnants of the buildings nor the presence of a cultural layer that could indicate permanent, or at least longer residence, have been found on the hillfort. Apart from the ceramics, a series of metal objects were found on the hillfort: silver beads, fragment of silver earring with ‘grape’ pendant, bronze rings, silver and bronze applications of leather straps, strap-ends, pendants and buckles from harness or saddlebags, iron and lead weights, iron arrowheads. Some of the metal artefacts have distinct analogies in Hungarian materials from 10th–11th century. Similar to the materials from a nearby settlement in Kaczyce, they indicate the possibility that groups or units of Hungarian origin that followed nomadic traditions had been staying in the vicinity of Sandomierz between the second half of 10th and the first half of 11th century. They might had been warriors serving in one of the Piast princes, captives brought by Bolesław I the Brave or merchants participating in international trade.
Compared to the new state borders of the Danube basin after World War One, the drawing of the Austro-Hungarian border was not only different but required the longest time (1918-1924). It was not a territorial dispute between a victorious and a losing state, but one between the two losers of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Austria and Hungary. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic (March to August, 1919), only the Austrian delegation was invited to the peace conference. This delegation successfully argued, through peaceful diplomatic channels, to make Western Hungary part of the new Austrian Republic. Under the Austrian peace treaty of Saint-Germainen- Laye (September 10, 1919) and the Hungarian one of Trianon (June 4, 1920), Austria received the area as well. However, the Hungarian side, using the means of political violence namely the paramilitary activity, enforced a referendum on Sopron/Ödenburg, the natural capital of the territory, which was previously judged to Austria (December 12, 1920). The participants of the referendum and the entire frontier population decided about their homelands not on ethnic grounds but on purely economic interests.
Tribal fragments of the Cumans, a people of the Eurasian steppe region, appeared in the medieval kingdom of Hungary in the early 13th century, on the eve of the Mongol Invasion. Many of them permanently settled in the Great Hungarian Plain, and their community had to undergo profound transformations both in terms of social and economic strategies. Mobile pastoralism, often associated with the Cuman communities of the steppe, was definitely impossible in their new homeland. However, animal husbandry remained the most important economic activity in this part of the Carpathian Basin in the centuries after the Cumans’ arrival. This paper provides a case study on the region called Greater Cumania in the Great Hungarian Plain, and especially on one Cuman village, Orgondaszentmiklós, where 14th–16th-century habitation layers were brought to light. Archaeological and written evidence for animal husbandry is analyzed in order to establish patterns of integration or specialization in terms of animal herding. The results show that although some preferences that may have been rooted in steppe tradition were retained, the main factor in economic orientation was the position in the settlement network and the connection to markets. Swine keeping, a tradition virtually non-existent in the steppe area, was adapted relatively quickly as a response to available natural resources (marshlands) in the area. It seems, on the other hand, that horses preserved their high social value and their flesh was also consumed.
The objective of this article is to present the funerary eye and mouth plates use as a funeral custom from the 10th century in the Carpathian Basin. Presented artefacts, which were interpreted as funerary eye and mouth plates, were sewn onto the shroud used to cover the skull or were placed on the eye cavity and on the mouth of the deceased person. The collected artefacts were divided into four parts, based on the formal aspect. Their characteristics were examined. These artefacts show strong connections with specimens known from eastern Europe, especially with the ones known from the Ural. The ancient Hungarians brought this funeral custom to the Carpathian Basin in the course of their conquest. Ethnic studies are needed to understand the discussed custom, and the subject requires further research.
As the adoption of the Hungarian simplified naturalisation scheme raised much tension both in the neighbouring countries of Hungary and in the main host countries of EU citizens, this paper summarises the nature of such reactions and the most frequent fears that EU states expressed. The main aim of the study is to show what effects a country’s modification of its citizenship rules may have on the situations of other EU member-states and European Union citizens. The article also raises one practical aspect of the situation that evolved as a result of the answer by Slovakia to the Hungarian modifications – namely the ex lege withdrawal of Slovakian citizenship if a person acquires a new one from another country. It introduces in detail the free-movement aspects of ethnic Hungarians losing their Slovakian citizenship, while not leaving their homeland in Slovakia, arguing that people in such a situation may rightfully and immediately be eligible for permanent residence rights, which would provide them with a higher level of protection.
The problem of Hungarian identity is one of the themes of Stanisław Vincenz’s essays written at the time of the Second World War. Inspired by Wincenty Pol’s thinking about relationship between the sense of geographical place and literature, he decided to explore the ‘general impact of landscape’ and in particular identify the place that would convey the essence of ‘Hungarianness’. The article looks at various aspects of this problem in Vincenz’s essay ‘Landscape – the background of history’ in the context of his other essays in which the idea of place is discussed. In effect, the article lays down a theoretical formula of indeterminate spots in modern literature. The indeterminate spot possesses six constitutive features: changeability and transmutability; fuzzy borders; shifty positioning between utopia and atopia; great semantic potential; the experience of place is involved in irreducible inconsistencies but rests on a solid ideological foundation.