After preparations lasting several years, the Germanic-Sarmatian Collection was officially formed within the Hungarian National Museum’s Department of Archaeology on 1 January 2011, on the initiative of Ádám Szabó and with the approval of László Csorba, the Museum’s director-general.

The Collection contains archaeological finds recovered from the Barbaricum part of the Carpathian Basin which belong to the imperial period in Roman history (i.e. can be dated to the time from the 1st to the 5th century CE), which entered the Hungarian National Museum’s collection (and were inventoried) between 1846 and the present, and which, from 1926 onwards, were assigned to various, period-based archaeological collections.

In 1994, Éva Garam, Mihály Nagy, and Attila Kiss selected those artefacts which were datable to the Roman Empire period and which had been recovered to the north or east of the River Danube, i.e. those artefacts which were from the Barbaricum. Now organised as a distinct unit, the finds selected continued to be part of the Roman Collection. Next, inventoried artefacts and assemblages from the medieval and prehistoric collections were obtained and, when appropriate in the light of find-site connections or misreadings of objects earlier on, were transferred to the new unit.

Despite the fact that there has been no Sarmatian-period specialist on the staff of the Museum since 1959, through the participation of outside experts the Museum’s Sarmatian-period artefacts have featured in the scientific domain on a continuous basis, in exhibitions as well as in catalogues. One of the first steps necessary for the building of a separate collection was a comprehensive audit extending not only to the artefacts taken over from the Great Migrations Period Collection, but also to those from the Roman Empire period kept in the other collections. This general audit began with the participation of Dénes Hullám from 2009 and continued with Zsófia Masek’s handling of the collection from 2010. In 2011, with financial support from the National Cultural Fund, with Ádám Szabó as editor-in-chief, and with Zsófia Masek and Eszter Soós as editor and technical editor respectively, compilation began of a catalogue of the Germanic-Sarmatian Collection.

This catalogue will appear in digital form on the website of the Hungarian National Museum, under the heading ‘Researchers’.  

It will be published in printed form as a volume in the framework of the journal Acta Musei Nationalis, tom. III.