Связи Карпатского бассейна и Поднестровья в IX–X вв. в свете новых радиоуглеродных данных о хронологии венгерского завоевания. Байесовская модель для могилы III/1 из Карош-Эперьешсёга с учетом ее возможного соотношения с могилой II/52

Grave III/11 of Karos-Eperjesszög is an exceptionally lavish assemblage of the 10th-century AD archaeological record of the Carpathian Basin; it has been interpreted by many as a leader’s burial. Therefore, specifying its dating is essential for the research of the era. The grave is of key importance not only for the settlement history of the Upper Tisza Region in the first half of the 10th century AD but also, on a broader prospect, for outlining the framework and particulars of the Hungarian Conquest. With regard to this historical event, one must highlight the scarcity and incompleteness of relevant data in available written sources and the fact that about a dozen radiocarbon results became available in the past years which point to related activity before the conventional AD 895 date. The mainly lonely weapon burials of adult men interred between AD 860 and 900 may be connected with written sources that mention early Hungarian troops regularly appearing in the Carpathian Basin from as early as AD 862.This paper presents all nine radiocarbon dates from the grave and provides Bayesian models based on them, the possible chronological connections of the feature with Grave II/52, a burial dated by coins, and a recent hypothesis that men in the two graves were brothers, which was formulated based on archaeogenetical results.The paper concludes the grave clusters with early Hungarian burials from the late 9th century AD — but is dated before AD 895 — of the Upper Tisza Region.In a broader sense, the examined graves have opened a new perspective for the research of the era by making us re-evaluate the accessibility and interpretability of the pre-Conquest Period of Hungarian prehistory — for example, by highlighting the relevance and necessity of further (e.g., strontium isotope) analyses of the man from Grave III/11, who had undoubtedly been born in Etelköz in the east (cf. Subotcy horizon). Creating such a framework was our goal in 2023 upon embarking on a project to compile a Bayesian model of all available radiocarbon dates from the Hungarian Conquest Period, with a core comprising only radiocarbon data of graves dated by coins. In the meantime, new developments in the archaeological research in Moldavia and Ukraine, together with recent results of archaeogenetical investigations in Hungary, have resulted in a reliable separation of the archaeological record representing in Eastern Europe the immediate, 9th-century predecessors of the Hungarians of the Conquest Period. The Subotcy horizon matches surprisingly well the important dates indicated by written sources (e.g., AD 836, 862, and 895); therefore, these were also reckoned with in our model.