Byzantium, Vrap and Bohemia - Two New Luxurious Belt Fittings from Middle Bohemia

This paper analyses two extraordinary finds of belt decorations from Cernosice and Ratenice in the Middle Bohemia. The gilded massive decorated buckle with beak-like decorated tongue and a buckle-plate decorated by a motif of walking gryphon complemented by tendril in openwork has only one analogy of the gold fitting in Vrap (Albania, depot) - more than 1000 km away. It belongs to the Vrap-Erseke-Velino horizon from the first third of the 8th c. The incomplete openwork cooper-alloy fitting from Ratenice with a motif of a mythical beast (feline?) is also Byzantine in origin and could have gotten to Bohemia through Carpathian Basin, where similar stylization from the first half of the 8th c. rarely appears. On this site, fittings of Late Avar type were found. Both fittings enrich the older group of decorations with ties to the south and south-east and both were imported into Bohemia.