The rectangular buckle with two enamel red eyes entered the collection of the Kursk Museum of Archaeology in 2011 as a result of the explorations conducted by the Middle Seym expedition of the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of Oleg Alexandrovich Radyush. The buckle frame is cast from a copper alloy and has a rectangular shape with two rounded protrusions decorated with circular red enamel eyes. The buckle’s tongue is missing. The item is dated to the 3rd century CE and belongs to the Kyiv archaeological culture, whose bearers are considered by scholars to be the ancestors of the Slavs.

In the late Roman and Migration periods, the Proto-Slavic costume was a complex system that included a headdress, clothing, shoes, jewelry, accessories, and equipment. Buckles were a standard attribute of men’s and warriors’ attire. The widespread use of spurs, the use of whips, and the presence of drinking horns and elements of belt fittings in local antiquities clearly indicate the emergence of a warrior culture connected to the local mounted elite by the late 2nd to 3rd centuries. During the 2nd to 4th centuries, a distinctive style of so-called East European barbarian champlevé enamels spread across a vast territory of Eastern Europe. This style is most characteristic of the Dnieper and Desna regions in the 3rd to 5th centuries, where it originated, based on the local late Zarubintsy style and the influence of provincial Roman craftsmanship.

Items with enamels often formed part of the rich and bright sets found in hoards, indicating established aristocratic traditions and a culture of prestige among the Proto-Slavic population. These objects typically share a certain stylistic unity. These are cast decorations made of copper alloy, decorated with enamel that fills recessed areas. They were specially crafted in a wax model of the future product before being cast in metal.

Enamel is a thin glassy coating on the metal surface, produced by high-temperature processing, one source of which in the 3rd to 4th centuries in the Dnieper region was imported Roman glass beads.