558 Medieval Coins Near Madaras Headline a Major Hungarian Archaeology Book

A new 840-page book from a museum in central Hungary gathers fifteen years of fieldwork into a single reference on the medieval landscape between the Danube and the Tisza rivers. One of its headline finds is a hoard of 558 medieval coins from near Madaras, scattered across a field by ploughing. The book, Synergia I, also covers seal matrices, weapons, metalworking finds and evidence for the Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242.

A publication fifteen years in the making

The Katona József Museum in Kecskemét produced Synergia I: Studies from the Kecskemét Medieval Workshop. István Pánya and Bernát Rácz edited the volume, which draws on fieldwork carried out from 2011 to 2026. The authors focus on the Danube-Tisza Interfluve, the flat region between Hungary’s two great rivers, and on the 11th to 17th centuries. Roughly half of the book documents thousands of archaeological objects. The editors say they hope to publish further volumes every few years.

The project also aims to map places that have vanished from the modern landscape, including villages, churches, monasteries, manor houses, mills, roads and boundaries.

The Madaras coin hoard

Archaeologists found the hoard near Madaras, in Bács-Kiskun County in southern Hungary. Community archaeology volunteers discovered it in 2022, and the team carried out further excavation in 2023. Ploughing had dragged the coins over an area of about 40 by 16 metres, so the original burial spot is no longer intact.

The team recovered 558 coins. Of these, 541 are anonymous Hungarian denars and 17 are Friesach-type coins, a silver issue minted in the Alpine region. The museum team suggests that someone probably buried the hoard during the reign of King Béla III, who ruled from 1172 to 1196. That puts the burial at roughly 830 to 850 years ago. The book describes the group as the largest known hoard of its type in Bács-Kiskun County.

Coin hoards help historians because the coins give a snapshot of the money in circulation when the owner buried them. A mix of local denars and foreign Friesach pieces also points to the trade links that reached the Great Hungarian Plain in the late 12th century. The source does not say why the owner buried the coins or never recovered them, and that question remains open.

Metalworking, weapons and the Mongol invasion

The volume covers more than coins. At Nemesnádudvar, in the Klösterle area near a settlement dated to the 11th to 13th centuries, researchers recorded 24 objects linked to medieval metalworking. They suggest these finds may connect to destruction during the Mongol invasion of 1241 to 1242. The source presents that link as an interpretation, not a confirmed event.

Other chapters examine star-shaped maces and an unusual ceremonial crossbow bolt head from Orbágyszentgyörgy. A further study combines archaeology with written accounts to look at Mongol looting across the Great Hungarian Plain.

A large catalogue of seals

The book includes what the report calls the largest published catalogue of medieval seal matrices and signet rings in Hungary to date. The objects come from across Bács-Kiskun County. They include a seal matrix belonging to the Kecskemét tailors’ guild. The volume also covers iron tools, religious objects and furnishings from the Augustinian friary at Bátmonostor.

Why it matters

Much of the medieval countryside on the Great Plain left little trace above ground. Villages and churches vanished, and farmers have ploughed their sites for centuries. A systematic catalogue of finds, tied to maps of lost settlements, gives other researchers a base for comparing sites, dating objects and testing ideas about how people lived, traded and fled during the Mongol invasion.

Caveats

This post relies mainly on a HeritageDaily report of 13 November 2026, which credits the Katona József Museum. We could not open the book itself or a museum press release, so details such as the exact dating of the hoard come from that report. The Béla III date is a probable attribution, not a proven one, and the reasons for the burial are unknown.

Sources

• Katona József Museum, Kecskemét (publisher of Synergia I, eds. István Pánya and Bernát Rácz)
• HeritageDaily: Major archaeological publication reveals lost history of medieval Hungary

Image credit: KKJM, via HeritageDaily.