Unknown pagan cult

 

This may be somewhat obscure news unless you are very well versed in Early Medieval Central European history. Archeologists in the Czech Republic and neighboring nations have found peculiar belt buckles showing a snake devouring a frog-like creature. The meaning of the symbolism is unclear, but could be connected to the cosmogonic myth of some unknown pagan cult. The buckles are dated to the 8th or 9th century AD (this is not clearly spelled out in the article linked below, but I´ve skimmed the original paper) and are "typologically Late Avar". 

The Avars were a nomadic people from the Eurasian steppes (northeast Asia, according to the original paper) who controlled Pannonia (today Hungary) during the Early Middle Ages, but aspects of their culture were also adopted by their vassals and neighbors, both Slavic and Germanic. Some of the belts were found at Lány in Moravia, described in the original paper as a multi-cultural melting pot at the northern periphery of the Avar khaganate. The metal used in the belts has been analysed and found to hail from the Slovak Ore Mountains, also outside the core area of the khaganate.

Well, aint that fantastic. 

The reason why the above caught my eyes is that years ago, I read some Slovak history books with a nationalist or crypto-nationalist tendency, in which the Avars were always depicted as really henious oppressors of the usual rape-and-pillage type, eventually overthrown by the heroic and valiant Slavs, et cetera. Note that the Avars were based in the area that later became Hungary, the traditional enemy of Slovak nationalists. Anachronism, much? 

So I thought it was kind of funny that the Slavs were culturally influenced by the Avars even outside the territory controlled by the khaganate. Even to the point of adopting an unknown pagan cult!   

Medieval belt buckle might be from unknown pagan cult

OK, so I might as well link to the original paper, since I mentioned it three times already:

Copper-alloy belt fittings and elite networking in Early Medieval Central Europe