A gilded attire set from the Museum of Srem

Abstract

In this paper, part of a gilded attire set for decorating clothes is published, from the Museum of Srem, belonging to the Hungarian arts-and-crafts milieu of the period immediately after their settling in the Pannonian Plain. The group of finds, consisting of a total of 14 pieces, was gifted to the Museum in the middle of the 20th century as a legacy of Franjo Rački, who was the parson of Sremska Mitrovica and trustee of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb. It is assumed that the finds originate from the area of Mitrovica, where Rački used to procure antiquities, or the wider region of Syrmia. It is a set consisting of two-piece pendants and two types of appliques which used to adorn the attire of the female part of the population in the 10th century. On this occasion, formal, technological and decorative characteristics are examined, through a comparative analysis with similar decorative sets from the Carpathian Basin. Finally, with an overview of other archaeological finds of similar chronology, historical circumstances and the nature of the Hungarian presence in the area between the Danube and the Sava are briefly discussed.