Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 20. 1980 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1983)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bartosiewicz László: Animal remains from a Medieval cess-pool. p. 169–180.
\ the material of this study the general properties of archaeozoological bone finds from cemeteries and settlements are worth considering. a. Cemetery material Bone remains of animals from graves are considered to be parts of certain funeral rites. As a consequence they are usually fewer in number and in many cases articulated (Bökönyi—Bartosiewicz 1980). Often the relatively exact dating and identification of graves can be made on the basis of grave goods. Also, analyses of grave goods are not disturbed by the sort of mixed continuum, which is present on the settlements of many generations. In addition, excavation of graves, tends to be more accurate thus insuring the recovery of smaller sized artifacts. This fact tends to favor the recovery of small bones, even on such excavations where otherwise funds, time ot manpower are limited. Similarities : One of the cess-pools belonging to a larger system provides only a small number of bones. Although, the dating of cess-pool material is not more precise than that from the whole site, it can be reasonably assumed that the bones were the remains of the food given to those who had the privilege of eating in the convent hall. Thus, the material is (at least to a certain extent) culturally selected, as are grave goods. As a consequence of the archaeological artifacts of great interest found here, the cess-pool was also excavated with special care. Differences : The random origin of bones does not allow the possibility of reconstructing skeletons which is sometimes possible with grave offerings. As a result of cooking and kitchen procedures in general, mostly small bones were found, while sections of meat buried during funeral rites often contain larger bones as well. b. Settlement material Fanual material coming from settlements is characterized by a large number of individual bone specimens (Olsen 1968) which are often also fragmentary and damaged. As a consequence of the lack of articulated skeletal parts the reconstruction of individual animals is usually impossible. The great number of pieces however, often provides a good base for statistical evaluation of biometrics and patterns of consumption. Similarities : The bones found in the cess-pool belong in a sense to a settlement. As such, they are usually damaged and practically none of them can be identified as coming from the same skeleton. Differences: As opposed to large settlement materials these faunal remains result chiefly from consumption of meat rather than from bone industry or other forms of animal product exploitation. Therefore, and because of the nature of the location within the site, the material has all the disadvantages of partial recovery with the advantage that the provenience of the bones is.spatially and temporally rather well isolated. No attempts were made therefore, to use it as a real sample of the faunal material as a whole. Fig. 1 Summarizing the four viewpoints one may easily say that the cess-pool material dealt with in this paper is equally effected by the disadvantages and inaccuracies of both types of artifact deposition. On the other hand however, these bones provide a unique possibility to illustrate the meat eating habits of higher rank inhabitants from an identified location. In terms of the cess-pool system as a whole this material can also be considered a sample although final conclusions should probably be drawn only when the entire bone material would have been studied. In spite of the limited possibility of analysis the special importance of the following description lies in the archaeozoological documentation of the artifacts found in the same cess-pool. Results and Conclusions The results of this study may be found in Tables I —III, upon which the following conlusions were based. Due to the lack of a large comparative material it is in general very difficult to reconstruct a disarticulated fish skeleton (CASTEEL 1976). All the fish bones found in the cess-pool probably come from at least two, relatively small pikes.( 3 ) These were obviously also eaten in the convent hall, but only the relatively resistent parts of the skeleton survived the centuries and were recovered during excavations. Fish remains display high variability in preservation (Olsen 1968). (3) Special thanks are due to Dr. Pál S z é к у who provided comparative material and help in the identification offish bones (11 01 01, 11 02 01, 11 01 02). ...
