Folia archeologica 36.

Lovag Zsuzsa: Egy XI. századi bronz korpusz

EARLY MEDIEVAL AUROCHS 219 9—11th centuries in Eastern-Europe, Moldavia (USSR), South Moravia and in the Carpathian Basis (Hungary); 9—12th centuries in Saxony/Lower Silesia and Brandenburg; 9/10—13/14th centuries in Pomerany, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein. If this chronological delay is based on real fact i. e. it is not the consequence of uncertainities in archaeological dating this suggests a continuous South/Southeast to North/Northwest direction withdrawal with the extinction of the "atlantic" Aurochs. In the 13th century affer its withdrawal to the territories of German

—Polish Lowland the Aurochs finally became extint in Europe. All the written records referring to Aurochs from the period after the 13th century, should be reviewed. E. g. a common reference to the 10th century occurrence of Aurochs in Switzerland is found in the work of the monk Ekkehard IV.

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3 He wrote the 9—10th century history of the St. Gallen monastery (Casus Sancti Galli) in the first half of the 11th century, based on oral tradition. In this work Ekkehard IV. mentions 'vesons', 'urus', and 'bos silvanus' as animal names. In my opinion, all three names are the German, Gallic and Latin names of the forest ox (wald ochs), Bison. The 'urus' mentioned by him could not have been the Aurochs, not least because the Aurochs reached the Alpine region of Switzerland only during a period of population expansion in the Late NeolithicEneolithic. In Hungary, in the Carpathian Basin, the Aurochs became extint in the 9—10th centuries, that is earlier than B. A. Szalay thought (according to him it happened in the 13th century). The data and also some extrem hypotheses concerning the origin of steppe white cattle in Hungary have been recently collected by J. Matolcsi.

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1 The large, longhorned wild white cattle which appeared in Hungary in large number in the 16—17th centuries, could not have been derived directly from the Aurochs. 9

3 Szalay, В., Der grimmer Scheich. Zool. Ann. 8 (1916) 152.; Hescheler, K.—Kuhn, E., Die Tierwelt der prähistorischen Siedlungen der Schweitz. In: Tschumi, O., Urgeschichte der Schweiz I. (Frauenfeld 1949) 276. 9

4 Matolcsi, ]., op. cit. (1982) 255—257.; earlier Bökönyi, S. op. cit. (1974) 142,—