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

ers of individuals (Bökönyi, 1976, Table 2). In fact, a similar development took place in Goljamo Delöevo, another Bulgarian aeneolithic site, too (Ivanov, 1975, 281 f). There is also another difference between Obre II and Poljanitza on the one hand and the two Hungarian sites on the other. While in Herpály, the aurochs played a leading part (outnumbering red deer by more than 2:1) that in fact has been well-known in the Middle and Late Neolithic of Hungary for a long time (Bökönyi, 1959,80 f; 1971b, 643; 1974,27 fp, and it was very frequent in Aszód too, in Obre II it lagged far behind red deer (Bökönyi, 1976,57), and finally in Poljanitza, it was rather unimportant in spite of the fact that it was comparatively numerous in the lower levels (Bökönyi, in print). The explanation of the above differences lies in the different cultural-economic developments on the Balkan Peninsula and in the Carpathien Basin on the one hand and in zoogeographical factors on the other. In the Balkans, where the climate was closer to that of South West Asia, the place of origin (if the early neolithic type of animal husbrandry based on caprovines), the switchover from caprovines to locally domesticable cattle and pig went a little slower than in the Carpathian Basin for two reasons: 1) Sheep and goats brend comparatively better there and man was consequently not forced to replace them with cattle and pigs. 2) There were much less wild cattle living there, and man could simply not domesticate enough of them. At the same time, aurochses lived in abudance on the Great Hungarian Plain of the Carpathian Basin, and in the Late Neolithic, the time of the „domestication fever" (Bökönyi, 1974, 28). The people killed a lot of the adult ones while trying to capture and domesticate the young ones in a kind of specialized hunting in the service of domestication (Bökönyi, 1969, 219 ff; 1974, 27 ff, 111 ff). In fact, the most important and largest cattle domestication centre existed in the Carpathian Basin in Aszód and probably in Herpály as well, a certain kind of aurochs cult developed obviously in a close connection with aurochs domestication. One thing is common in the wild bone samples of all four sites: fish bones are enormously rare or completely missing in them in spite of the vicinity of the site to small rivers or brooks. The only explanation is that there existed some kind of prohibition of fish eating. Turning to the domestic animals, one can state that all four sites fall into that developed phase of the Late Neolithic animal husbrandry when man discovered several „secondary" uses of his domestic animals (Bökönyi, 1971,643; 1974,26 ff; 1983,14 ff; 1984,32 f). Up to this period domestic animals had been considered as mere living reserves of meat that could be consumed at any time. Obviously, the first „secondary" use was milking, cattle as draught animals could be used from at least the middle of the 4th mill. B. C. on, however, the utilization of the wool of sheep may have been far more important even in earlier times. Nevertheless, the above mentioned switchover from species without local wild forms (sheep and goat) to locally domesticable ones (cattle and pig) was not finished in all of the sites: e. g. in Obre II (Table 3). The caprovines out numbered pigs by about 2:1 in the earliest phase. The situation changed in the second phase when pigs were somewhat more frequent than caprovines, and in the latest phase pigs were by about 50% more frequent than caprovines (Bökönyi 1976,62). In Pol71