Over 100 Avar Graves Found Near a Transylvanian Salt Mine, and the Men Barely Wore Belts

Archaeologists working in the Magyarlapád area of Transylvania have excavated more than 100 graves from an Avar-period cemetery at a site called Vadverem (also written Odverem), close to the Kisakna salt mine. The burials date to the 7th and 8th centuries AD. Horses lie in some of the graves, spears lie in several male burials, and the women and children wore pearl necklaces and earrings. One oddity stands out: the metal belts that usually mark Avar men’s graves are rare here.

Who the Avars were

The Avars were a mounted steppe people who moved into the Carpathian Basin in the later 6th century and dominated much of Central Europe for roughly two and a half centuries. Their cemeteries are among the best sources for how they lived, because families buried their dead with weapons, horse gear, jewellery and dress fittings. Archaeologists read rank, gender and regional ties from those objects. Transylvania sat on the eastern edge of the Avar world, so cemeteries there help show how far the same customs reached and how local communities adapted them.

What the team found

The excavators uncovered more than 100 graves so far. Several contain horse burials with horse-related equipment, a classic Avar custom that tied a rider to his animal in death. Male burials hold spears. Women and children lie with personal ornaments, including pearl necklaces and earrings. That mix paints a community that included whole families, not only warriors.

The missing belts raise the biggest question. In most Avar cemeteries, decorated metal belt sets mark men of some standing. At Vadverem they are uncommon, and the researchers say the evidence cannot yet explain why. The community may have followed different dress rules, may have had different access to metal, or may belong to a different phase of the Avar period. None of those ideas is settled.

Who dug, and where

The Hungarian National Museum leads the fieldwork, and students from ELTE in Budapest and the University of Cluj-Napoca take part as training partners. The team has investigated the Magyarlapád area for five years. The latest season ran for three weeks and focused on the Avar cemetery. ELTE’s Institute of Archaeology in the Faculty of Humanities (BTK) published the announcement.

The salt question

The cemetery lies near the Kisakna salt mine, and salt was a valuable resource across the Carpathian Basin for centuries. Researchers now ask whether that nearby salt shaped the life of the people buried at Vadverem. The reports frame this as a research question, not a result. Nobody has shown yet that the community mined, controlled or traded salt, and the graves alone cannot prove it. Future work could look at settlement traces, the layout of the cemetery and how the site fits with other Avar communities in the region.

Why it matters

A cemetery with more than 100 excavated graves gives researchers a real sample to compare with other Avar sites. They can test who these people were, how they connected to other Avar groups in the Carpathian Basin, and why one of the usual status markers is so scarce. Even a negative pattern, such as few belts, tells archaeologists something about local identity and trade. A well-documented burial ground also preserves information about people who left no written records of their own.

Caveats and open questions

• The excavation continues, so the grave count, dating and interpretation may change.
• The reports do not give a precise grave total beyond “more than 100”.
• The role of the nearby salt resources remains a hypothesis.
• The reason for the rarity of metal belts remains unexplained.
• I could not open the original ELTE page, so this post relies on the HeritageDaily report that cites it.

Sources

• HeritageDaily: More than 100 Avar graves uncovered near ancient salt-mining area (12 November 2026), which cites the ELTE BTK Institute of Archaeology (btk.elte.hu) and the Hungarian National Museum

Image credit: ELTE BTK Institute of Archaeology, via HeritageDaily.