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.

presented in the species order that was used throughout this section (Mixed materials are not shown in this table). Cattle The bone remains of cattle, and large animals in general, are usually overrepresented in faunal assemblages from archaeological sites as a result of two independent phenomena which in a way reinforce each other. It is possible that the great frequency with which cattle bone fragments are encountered in archaeozoological collections may be positively biased by both of these. The first source of this bias may be sought in taphonomic factors which in general result in heavier fragmentation of the large peices of bone (Binford-Bertram 1977). On the other hand, although small bones of smaller animals have more chance to survive whole, they are less likely to be found unless rigorous recovery techniques are applied (Takács 1984). This is why the greater proportion of cattle remains (at least in terms of raw counts) in most cases should be regarded with certain reservations. One might argue that the large live weight and respectable meat yield of large ungulates may to some extent justify this overrepresentation in consumption patterns, but the relationship between taphonomic and recovery bias to estimated productin output is so obscure that no sort of compensation of this kind should even be considered for the time being. It is only the opposition of these two tendencies (overestimation and relatively large meat production) and not their scale that may be worth being kept in mind. Consequently, cattle should be regarded as an important component of practically all the subsets of faunal remains in this study. Bones found in the medieval material seem somewhat smaller than those from the subsequent Turkish Period. A particularly large horn core from a cow was found in the Turkish Period pit at JM/1 (PL I). This intuitive observation of size differences in the fragmented bone material is also supported by withers height estimations that made use of complete metapodial bones from both periods. Generalizations, of course, should carefully be avoided due to the scarcity of the data presented here. In addition to its unquestionable historical-economic importance cattle has also been quite widely studied from the inception of archaeozoological research (Rütimeyer 1978). As a result, a number of biométrie calculations were developed aimed at reconstructing the stature of individuals, chiefly in terms of withers height, on the basis of the proportion of metapodial lengths within this body measurement (Boessneck 1956; Zalkin 1960; Matolcsi 1968; etc.). Stature estimations using complete metacarpals and metatarsals encountered in the material are listed in Table XXII. Although withers height is a rather informative feature of an individual's constitution, it may often be overestimated in (young) individuals (Prummel 1982) due to well known growth characteristics of the metapodials which (as peripheral parts of the skeleton) reach mature size relatively early (Hammond 1960, 78-89). It must also be pointed out that even accurately esti- mated withers height may not be the most reliable economic indicator of beef production and external appearence (Bartosiewicz 1983 a). Fortunately, articulated skeletal remains found at the JM/1 garbage pit offered a perfect opportunity for calculating several body measurements (metacarpal withers height, metatarsal withers height, live weight and fat free carcass weight) and testing these measurements against each other in the case of the same adult cow (PI. II). The sex of this individual could be established using metapodial proportions (Bökönyi 1962). Uniform discoloration, accluding joint surfaces and similar deposition patterns suggest that the fragment of radius, a complete metacarpus, an astragalus and a whole metatarsus (all from the right side of the animal) listed in Table XL provide appropriate data for such a reconstruction attempt. Four kinds of estimated withers height have already been shown in Table XXII. These values suggest that the animal's stature was between that of a modern Brown Swiss and Austrian Fleckvieh cow. For the purposes of further calculations first the greatest length attributable to the proximal radius fragment was estimated using the four measurements available on the remaining end of the bone. Calculation based on this bone's surviving dimensions was carried out usin a sample of 34 cattle skeletons presented elsewhere in detail (Bartosiewicz 1984c). Although this comparative material equally included males and females, analysis of raw data published by Bergström and Wijngaarden-Bakker (1983) confirmed observations that radius shows the least sexdependent variation among the long bones in cattle (Bartosiewich 1984c). Estimations have been carried out using the regression method as shown in Table XXIII. According to the formula published by Williams (1979) parameters of the linear regression equation as well as estimated values of the dependent variable (greatest length of radius in this case) may be calculated from the univariate statistics of the pairs of variables and the coefficient of correlation between them. This latter showed a particularly strong relationship between each of the transversal measurements and greatest length. The only exception was smallest breadth, which is only moderately correlated with greatest length according to the criteria set by Guilford (1956). The result of this calculation served as input to a subsequent computation. In order to justify the approximate values obtained for withers height, a method was developed for the tentative reconstruction of the live weight of the same individual 136