Ferrule

One of the unique archaeological artefacts in the collection of the National Museum in Lublin is the Late Avar style belt end fitting discovered on a multicultural site located on the shore of Zalew Zemborzycki in Lublin, on the side of Dąbrowa Forest.

The belt end, made of bronze and richly decorated with a plant motif, typical for the Avars, was discovered during the excavations carried out in 1984-1985 by the workers of the Archaeology Department of the National Museum in Lublin on the multicultural site in Zemborzyce-Dąbrowa (currently Lublin-Dąbrowa). It was found in the cultural layer at the depth of only 50 cm.

The bronze fitting was cast in the form of a rectangular plate, rounded at the bottom and with two ears at the top. On both surfaces there is an ornamentation with stylised plant motifs on a concave background. These are two intertwined twigs, spreading and forming circles filled with five-leaved on one side and three-leaved palms on the other. The composition is completed by trifoliate motifs on both sides of the intertwined branches. Metallographic research showed that the fitting was made of a copper-tin alloy and has traces of gilding. The decoration was made in the lost-wax casting technique, punching and chiselling were used in the processing phase.

Belt-end fitting from Zemborzyce-Dąbrowa is an exceptional find, one of the few traces of contacts of Slavonic tribes living in south-eastern Poland with the Avar Khaganate in the Lublin area. It dates to about the second half of the 8th - 1st half of the 9th centuryies. In the whole of Poland monuments connected with this nomadic people can be found on only about thirty sites.