Vadas Ferenc (szerk.): A Szekszárdi Béri Balogh Ádám Múzeum Évkönyve 13. (Szekszárd, 1986)

Sándor Bökönyi: Environmental and cultural effects on the faunal assemblages of four large 4th mill. B. C. sites

Environmental and cultural effects on the faunal assemblages of four large 4th mill. B. C. sites SÁNDOR BÖKÖNYI, BUDAPEST The animal bone sample of a prehistoric or early historic settlement can provide us a lot of information concerning animal husbandry and hunting, two chief economic activities of the inhabitants of the site in question. The larger, the better preserved and the more carefully collected is such a bone sample, the more reliable and numerous informations can be gathered through its study. It is a very rare occasion when one can compare really large animal bone samples of several sites which are synchronous, though, they are coming from different environmental types. In this way, one is able to study the differences in the domestic and wild faunas; thus the animal husbandry and hunting caused by cultural and enviromental factors. It is particularly favourable when the animal bones of such samples are identified by one and the same person because in this way, the distinction of wild and domestic forms of certain animal species, the age and sex determination, the measuring of bones, etc. are carried out from the same viewpoints and by the same hands, and the possible errors are the same, too, resulting in a more reliable grade of comparability. Once I already had the opportunity to compare the animal bone assemblages of five early neolithic sites from Southwest Asia (Bökönyi, 1978,57 ff). This comparison proved to be successful and revealed a good number of cultural and environmental differences both in the animal husbandry an the hunting of the five sites in spite of the fact that the samples in question were rather different in size. I am in the position now to be able to compare the very large animal bone samples of four 4th mill. B. C. sites, two of them from the Balkan Peninsula and another two from the Carpathian Basin. (Fig. 1.) In fact, they are the largest prehistoric animal bone assemblages of the two above mentioned regions being the numbers of identified animal remains between 25,596 and 41,696 in these sites. The animal remains of all four sites have been identified by me. Out of the four sites, Obre II (Obre-Gornje Polje) lies in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, in the immediate vicinity of the river Trstionica, a tributary of the river Bosna, in a fertile, well-watered valley surrounded by densely forested mountains near the small town of Kakanj (Benac, 1973, 10). The excavation of the site were carried out by a Yugoslavian-American team of archaeologists under the directorship of Professors A. Benac and M. Gimbutas unearthing a large part of the settlement of the Late Neolithic Butmir culture that has - among others - connections of our Lengyel culture too (Benac, 1973, 165 f.) The excavation yielded an impressive 69