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

bone sample consisting of 28,941 identified specimens. This animal bone assemblage was already published in detail (Bökönyi, 1976, 57). The second site, Poljanitza, lies in Northeast Bulgaria in a hilly landscape near the town of Tärgoviste. The settlement had three main phases - Early, Middle and the beginning of Late Aeneolithic - covering the period from Boian III through Gumelnitza I (pers. comm. by Dr. H. Todorova) was fully excavated by Dr. H. Todorova and yielded 40,593 identified animal remains (Bökönyi, in print). The third site, Aszód-Papi földek, lies about 40 km east of Budapest, on the edge of a fertile, well watered valley in a low, hilly region. It belongs to the Lengyel culture, particularly to its early phase. Although, only a small part of the large settlement was excavated by Dr. N. Kalicz in several campaignes, there could be identified as many as 25,596 animal remains from it. The animal bone sample is yet unpublished, only the faunal list of the bones unearthed in the 1961 excavation was published (Bökönyi, 1974, 343). And finally, the fourth site, Herpály, which is located in the northeastern part of the Great Hugarian Plain, about 40 Ion south of Debrecen, the town of Beretytyóújfalu, in a fertile region rich in watercourses. After small-scale excavations by J. Sőregi and Dr. J. Korek & Dr. P. Patay respectively, Dr. N. Kalicz carried out a large-scale excavation that unearthed ca. 700 m

2 of the ca. 4,2 m high tell settlement. The upper part of the tell belongs to the Bronze Age, the lower layers represent the late neolithic Herpály culture. In this paper I only deal with the animal remains of the neolithic layers of this excavation (altogether 41,696 specimens), nevertheless, I already published the faunal list of the Korek-Patay excavation years ago (Bökönyi, 1959,35). The identification of the animal remains has not yet been finished because of the large quantity of the unearthed bones nevertheless, this large, incomplete sample is worth prelimininary studies. In this paper there will only be discussed those aspects of the four animal bone assemblages enumerated above which are closely connected with human activities; animal husbandry and hunting including their relationships and developments, the question of local domestication and its effect on the animal husbandry and hunting, exploitation of domestic animals, animal keeping strategies, and kill-off patterns. I shall try to view and handle the above questions in a dynamic way, thus I want to define their evolution, too. In this respect there is a great help for me that in Obre II and Poljanitza, the faunal assemblages can be divided level by level, thus the possible developments can easily be followed. In Aszód and Herpály, such a division has not yet been carried out, however, in the near future this will be done. In a final publication such dynamic viewpoints can be used at their studies, too. As for the domestic: wild ratio, in other words the importance of animal husbandry in comparision to that of hunting in the economy of the inhabitants, the four sites can be divided into two groups. While in Obre II and Poljanitza domestic mammals represented the overwhelming majority, in Aszód and Herpály there occurred more wild animals than domestic ones. (Figs. 2-3). In Obre II and Poljanitza there can also be observed the development of the domestic: wild ratio (Tables 1-2). Strangely enough, the ratio of wild animals constantly increased in every level of both sites. In Poljanitza, this could be excellently seen in the numbers of specimens (Bökönyi, in print), in Obre II only in the numb70