Kalicz Nándor - Koós Judit: Mezőkövesd-Mosolyás. A neolitikus Szatmár-csoport (AVK I) települése és temetője a kr. e. 6. évezred második feléből - Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén megye régészeti emlékei 9. (Miskolc, 2014)
Függelék - Vörös István: Neolitikus állattartás és vadászat Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás korai AVK településén
296 Vörös István distribution of the animal bones showed quite substantial variations. 12.8% (630 pieces) came to light from seven features which contained 1—5 bones (Features 153, 178, 249,284,288,418,428); three features each contained 6- 10 bones (Features 167 = House 3,217,240); four features each contained 15-49 bones (Features 9, 191,260, 164); two features contained 61 and 74 bones, respectively (Features 104, 238); and two features contained 170 and 177 bones, respectively (Features 130,226). The 97 bone tools comprised chisels, awls and needles made from cattle ribs, sheep and red deer tibia and metapodials, roe deer metapodials and wild boar tusks. The “bone spoons” used on the settlement (described as “polishers” in Table 9) were fashioned from cattle ribs, while the bone rings were crafted from red deer antler. The animal bone sample indicated that the breakdown of the domestic species was as follows: the sample was dominated by small ruminants (2345 bones, 50%), followed by cattle (2154 bones, 45.8%), pig (177 bones, 3.8%) and dog (19 bones, 0.4%). Cattle were large-medium-sized, tall animals. The withers height calculated from the right metacarpal found among the bone tools was 126.6 cm, corresponding to a large- medium size. Adult sheep were medium and large-sized. The average withers height calculated from the lengths of fourteen sheep bones was 56.7 cm, the lowest being 50.8 cm and the tallest being 63.5 cm. The goat horn- cores included both straight flat types (diam. 38 cm x 25 mm) and crescentic aegagrus types (diam. 56 mm x 38 mm). The split pig skulls were flat and V-shaped. The dentition was microdontic. Pigs were small-sized (Table 8). The settlement’s dogs were prehistoric Spitzlike turf dogs (Cams familiáris palustris Antonius 1861) and medium large shepherd dogs (Canis familiáris matris optimae Jeitteles 1877). The species breakdown of the domestic animals of the ALBK settlement at Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás is as follows: sheep: 49.3%, cattle: 45.8%, pig: 3.8%, goat 0.7% and dog: 0.4%. The most important utility species on this prehistoric settlement were cattle and sheep, while pig and goat can be regarded as “complementary” species. The two main species, cattle and sheep, provided the necessary meat, as well as the greater part of the raw materials such as suet, bones, hides and fur for various crafts. The skull and the mandibles were split in every case. Skull fragments dominate the cattle remains and mandible fragments the sheep remains. Meat was provided by ribs/shortloin/sirloin from the trunk region and chuck/brisket/round/shank from the meaty limb region: cattle: 41.0% + 25.4% = 66.4%, sheep 33.5% + 30.1% = 63.4%. The high occurrence of fragmented long tubular bones of cattle and sheep (humerus, femur and tibia) clearly indicate that they were broken in order to extract the marrow. Pig head appears to have been a popular dish or the basis of a dish in view of the fact that 40.7% (72 bones) of pig remains come from the head region. Pig meat came from the meaty limbs represented by one-third of the pig bones (60 bones, 33.9%). Cattle and sheep, the two most important species in the domestic stock, were exploited for their meat. Under prehistoric circumstances, the meat provided by an adult cattle (250 kg) was the equivalent of the meat yielded by ten adult sheep (10 x 25 kg). Goat and pig were “complementary” species. It would appear that the flayed hide of eight to ten goats was taken to the settlement, while pig meat was part of the diet. The meat of dog, a rare species in the sample, was also consumed. The hunters of the Neolithic settlement hunted almost all species of the wild fauna. Lying at the interface between the closed woodland and forested steppe in the foreland of the Northern Mountain Range, the broader environmentofthesettlementinvestigatedatMezőkövesd- Mocsolyás was characterised by a mosaic patterning of different habitats. This environment determined the species composition of both the domestic and the wild fauna. Cattle and sheep could be successfully raised in the forested steppe, while pig and goat in the woodland and gallery wood environment. Of the wild species, red deer and wild boar prefer deciduous-mixed forests, while roe deer the margins of deciduous forests. Aurochs and hare thrive in the sparser, shrubby gallery woods; wild horse and wild ass are creatures of the steppe. The two wild equids migrated to the Carpathian Basin along the river valleys during the Neolithic, and they could thus be hunted in the Tisza Valley. The cosmopolitan wolf, a super-predator, could be found in every habitat type. Wolf was hunted for its hide, hare for its fur and meat. The species composition and species proportions of the animal bone sample from Füzesabony-Gubakút and Mezőkövesd-Mocsolyás, the two ALBK settlements in the southern foreland of the Northern Mountain Range, are more or less identical. The fragment of the upper left molar (Ml) of a mammoth calf was recovered from the loess layer in Trench 10, opened on the western edge of the Neolithic settlement at Mocsolyás.
