Conflict and coexistence: the local population of the Carpathian Basin under Avar rule (sixth to seventh century) / Tivadar Vida -- Avar chronology revisited, and the question of ethnicity in the Avar Qaganate / Peter Stadler -- New remarks on the flow of Byzantine coins in Avaria and Walachia during the second half of the seventh century / Peter Somogyi -- Bulgars in the Lower Danube region: a survey of the archaeological evidence and of the state of current research / Uwe Fiedler -- Avar-age metalworking technologies in the Carpathian Basin (sixth to eighth century) / Orsolya Heinrich-Tamaska -- Two worlds, one hoard: what do metal finds from the foreststeppe belt speak about? / Bartlomiej Szymon-Szmoniewski -- The earliest Avar-age stirrups, or the "stirrup controversy" revisited / Florin Curta -- A note on the "Hungarian sabers" of medieval Bulgaria / Valeri Iotov -- Danube Bulgaria and Khazaria as part of the Byzantine oikoumene / Veselina Vachkova -- From 'steppe' to Christian empire and back: Bulgaria between 800 and 1100 / Tsvetelin Stepanov -- A broken mirror: the Kipcak world in the thirteenth century / Dimitri Korobeinikov -- The Cuman bishopric-genesis and evolution / Victor Spinei.