Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. A Szent István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 26. 1989-1992 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1997)

Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bartosiewicz László: A Székesfehérvár Bestriary: Animal Bones from the Excavations of the medieval City Wall. p. 133–167.

Alba Regia, XXVI, 1997 L. BARTOSIEWICZ A SZÉKESFEHÉRVÁR BESTRIARY: ANIMAL BONES FROM THE EXCAVATIONS OF THE MEDIEVAL CITY WALL INTRODUCTION 1 This paper is a summary of faunal materials brought to light during the course of excavations aimed at the partial recovery of the medieval city wall of Székesfehérvár in central Transdanubia, Western Hungary. The town itself has been one of the most important centers in the country since earliest Christian times and actually served as the capital of Hungary during the reign of the first kings of the Árpád Dynasty. It retained the status of the royal coronation and burial place for an even longer time. The period discussed in this paper includes late medie­val times beginning with the 15th century which preceded Turkish occupation of the town in 1543. Part of the mate­rial is also associated with the Turkish Period itself. Since all the animal bones described in this paper come from the Castrum area, that is, the inner side of the former city wall, which was mostliy inhabited by the occupying Turkish population, the existence of some kind of a di­chotomy may be hypothesized between the composition of the two assemblages assigned to pre-Turkish (medieval) and Turkish Period excavation units. 2 Unfor­1 I would like to acknowledge the help of the excavator, Gyula S i к -1 ó s i who offered valuable help in the interpretation of the bone finds. Grateful thanks are due to Dénes Jánossy who helped with the identification of crane bones and Professor J о h a nnes Lepiksaar (Göteborg) who contributed additnal infor­mation. I would also like to thank Krisztina P á 1 f a y for the care she took in the execution of the photographs and Alice M. С h о у к е who revised the English text. Computing work was fi­nanced by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The partial presenta­tion of this paper at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the Medieval Acad­emy of America was sponsored by the Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Toronto) and Grant No. 247/6678 of the Soros Foun­dation. 2 As will be shown by the interpretation of several crucial finds, this sub-division of the material does not necessarily mean a clear dichot­omy in the exploitation of animals, since the local inhabitants and their livestock were not entirely replaced by the Turkish forces and tunately, most of the provenances uncovered held few animal bones and very often contained no zoological finds at all. Thus, due to the sporadic nature of the material, this hypothesis can not be accurately tested. It is hoped, how­erer, that results summarized in this study will even so serve to illustrate different tendencies in animal exploita­tion during the two main periods. MATERIAL AND METHODS Faunal materials relevant to the study of the medieval city wall have not yet been found in any greater quantity. The animal bones discussed in this study come from three separate locations representing a relatively wide time span. The distribution of bones among the provenances of these three sites and during the chronological intervals involved is summarized in Table I. As may be seen in these figures, when the overall as­semblage is broken down into the ap- propriate sub-sets of animal bone finds, no reliable proportions between the bone fragment frequencies from various species could be established on the statistically required minimum level of probability (Rosenbaum 1959; Cherry 1978). Percentages calculated on the basis of too few bone specimens would only "represent" the tip of the iceberg of the potential deposition patterns (Choyke-Bartosiewicz 1982/83). Proportions of similar magnitude would further bias such estimations as is suggested by the algorithms used in testing such results (McCullagh 1974; Bartosiewicz 1984b). For this reason, the quantitative approach to the analy­sis of the material in this study has largely been rejected lmnported patterns of animal husbandry. Nevertheless, a certain de­gree of substitution may be expected between domestic animal spe­cies. 133

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