Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 4. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1976)

S. Bökönyi: Szarmata lelőhelyek állatcsont leletei Bács-Kiskun megyéből

BY SÁNDOR BŐKÖN Yl ANIMAL REMAINS OF SARMATIAN SITES FROM BÁCS-KISKUN COUNTY The history of domestic animals in Hungary has been intensively studied in the last twenty-five years, and as a result the main phases of their development are well-known now. There is a period, however, about whose domestic animals and animal husbandry our knowledge is rather incomplete, and this is the Migration Period. This seems quite strange because the archeologibts' excavation activity has been probably the strongest in this period but it certainly has its problems. On the one hand, it is a fact that the overwhelming majority of direct, first-hand data concerning the animal husbandry and the domestic fauna as a whole can be supplied by bone assemblages of settlements, but only a few settlements of this period have been excavated, and even these excavations were smalJ-scale, yielding small amounts of animal remains hardly suitable for a quantitative analysis. On the other hand, the animal remains found in the graves of the cemeteries give only indirect data concerning the domestic fauna as a whole, although, they can be extremely suitable for studies on breed or type problems and the determination of size, body weight and proportions of certain animal species. But the circle of these species is limited by the funeral rites almost completely independently from their importance in the animal husbandry. This is why the hosr les of the Migration Period are so well-known, catte,sheep, dogs and hens of the same period are much less studied, while goats and pigs are the least known — and this order is given by the frequencies of the different species in the graves. The Avars and early Hungarians are those peoples of the Migration Period whose domestic anim?ls are the best known because a) their cemeteries have been excavated in the greatest number, and b) their graves contained animal remains suitable for morphologicalstudies in the largest quantities. At the same time, the domestic animals of neither the different Germanic tribes nor the Sarmatians have been studied in detail. As for the Sarmatians, it is hardly understandable because a large number of sites of these people have been excavated both in the Great Hungarian Plain and in North Hungary whose archaeological finds were evaluated in a large monograph (Párducz, 1943, 1947, 1950), Nevertheless, if one takes the fact into consideration that most of these excavations were carried out before 1950, the beginning of the systematic collection and study of archeozoological materials in Hungary, he will have an explanation. Thus it could happen that among the almost four-hundred archeological sites of Hungary with bone samples studied, there were only ten Sarmatian ones (Bökönyi, 1974). And even among these ten sites there was only one (Szilvásvárad), which had a bone sample large enough for quantitative studies, and another (Apagy-Barucha J. földje) which yielded a smaller smaple, still of good quality. The aim of this article is to add some data to our knowledge on the animal husbandry and the domestic animals of the Sarmatians through the studies on the animal bone samples of seven Sarmatian sites recently excavated in Bács-Kiskun County. The animal remains of the following sites are included in the article: 1) Kunbaracs—Beck tanya. Excavated by A. Horváth, 1963. The animal remains are in the Katona József Múzeum, Kecskemét, under the inventory numbers 65.15.6-7. 2) Kunpes^ér. Excavated by T. Szentléleky, 1954. Inventory numbers of the animal remains in the Katona József Múzeum, Kecskemét: 69.28.1—31. 41