Folia archeologica 30.
Viola T. Dobosi - István Vörös: Adatok a lovasi őskori festékbánya leletegyüttesének értékeléséhez
16 V. T. DOBOSI—[ . VÖRÖS Cranes may be termed as aquatic birds; they live during their migrations on bare, open, marshy meadows or dry grassy steppes. When brooding they frequent lowland woods, woody and shrubby marshlands. The ecological demands of the specimens, found at Lovas, are - with the exception of the ibex remains - dominantly of a temperate woodland milieu. The elk indicates also the vicinity of swampy areas. With the exception of the worked ulnae the animal bone material comes, in the case of each of the seven specimens, without exception from such body regions which are, as foodstuffs, worthless. On the ground of the division of the animal bone material, with the aid of the Kretzoi method, 3 3 16,28 % of the bones are antlers, 3,10 % belongs to the head regions, 30,23 % to those of the trunk, 25,58 % to the "fleshy extremities". 23,26 % to the "dry extremities" and 1,55 % to those •of the terminal region (phalanges). 3. Technological remarks Since the publication of the Lovas find material the number of the bone implements from Hungarian Palaeolithic sites has increased. 3 4 In the course of the Vértesszőlős excavations a huge number of animal bones was unearthed. The overwhelming majority belongs to settlement bones, i.e. they are long bones broken to a length of ca. 10 to 20 cms, in their greatest part split. It was just the study of the splitting technique that made a revision of bone objects, defined as implements, necessary, which were yielded by previous excavations, especially in the course of cave diggings. At Vértesszőlős the long bones were split whit a so-called "crack and twist" movement, demanding a great bodily force and dexterity, which yielded automatically a point and an edge suitable for work. In spite of the unfavourable fossilisation circumstances and the technical difficulties of the digging, we succeeded in collecting a few bone objects which show, beyond doubt, a zig-zag-line working edge formed in a technique similar to that of the stone working, i.e. produced by rough strokes from one or both sides. 3 5 The elaboration of the bone implements of Vértesszőlős has been published. 36 Investigating the production technique of the Lovas bone implements we have to stress the followings: 3 3 Kretzoi, M.-Gábori-Csánk, V., Zoologie archéologique. In : Gábori-Csánk, V., op. cit. 230. 3 4 Gábori M., Arch. Ért. 78(1951) 7-18.: Vértes, L., Acta Arch. Hung. 5(1954); Id., FA 14(1962) 7-13; Id., MTA К II. 15(1967) 303.; Gábori, M., Arch. Ért. 86(1959) 3-19; Dobosi, V., Arch. Ért. 94(1967) 185.; Vértes, L. et el., Tata, eine mittelpaläolithische Travertin-Siedlung in Ungarn. AH 43. (Budapest 1964); Gábori-Csánk, V., La station ... 158. 3 5 In the caustic sludge of Vértesszőlős, containing the cultural layer, the animal bone material appeared in a butter-coloured, soap-like fosilization. As far as the bones were laid on the top of the cultural layer, it was practically impossible to extract them in an intact state while detaching the sill consisting of calcareous sinter. Only the bones charred to different degrees were in a better state of preservation. 3 6 Dobosi, V., A vértesszőlősi csonteszközök. (Dokt. dissz. 1969. megjelenés alatt.) (The bone implements of Vértesszőlős (Ph. D. thesis 1969, - in print.)
