Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 1. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1972)

S. Bökönyi: Őstulok (Bos primigenius Boj) leletek az Őrjeg tőzeglápjaiban

not a wandering species. The best evidence tor this is that the great aurochs hunters and domesticators of the Hungarian Middle and Late Neolithic lived settled life in tell type settlements. One doesn't know the size ot „home range" of aurochs either, however, one can suppose with right that it was at least as big as that of red deer. Threfore one can hardly make a mistake considering the auroches of the three sites — that lie only a couple of kilometers from each other — as individuals of the same population. Craniologically the Őrjeg aurochs population is rather uniform. The whole skulls and all fragments which reveal anything about the skull form show the typical characteristics of the European aurochs : large skull with thick bones; wide, straight intercornual ridge ; wide, squarish, flat or even concave forehead, sometimes with a hardly pronunced sagittal crest on it; tubular orbits; large, concave occipital region. The whole skull of Szabadszállás (Figs. 2—4) is a typical exapmle, but not from a very large animal; on the contrary it represents one of the smallest bulls in the whole sample. Both other skulls are only slightly larger and their horn-cores a little longer, however, not essentially stronger than those of the Szabadszállás bull, and also their horn form is very similar to that of the first skull. On the other hand the three major skull fragments (Fig. 5, a

—c) are from stronger bulls. The horn-cores of the three sites are large and very long. Five horn-cores of the sample are longer than 700 mm (one of them would have grown even longer, if the animal had not been killed at an early age), and one Szabadszállás specimen with a missing distal part (therefore its greatest length is not represented in the measurement tables) could have reached 800 mm (Fig. 6, b). A length of 700 mm is extremely rare among aurochs horn-cores, and the 800 mm long specimen is one of the longest Holocene aurochs horn-cores ever published. (Also its other dimensions are extremely large, i.e. 445 mm basis circumference, probably the largest published in the literature.) From the Carpathian Basin only one horn-core is known which is longer than this one: the left horn-core of an adult aurochs bull with 950 mm greatest length, in the Municipal Museum of Subotica, Northeast Yugoslavia. Interestingly it was found in a peat-bog similar to that of Szabadszállás, about 100 km from our site. The Őrjeg horn-cores are similar to other aurochs horn-cores of the Holocene of the Hungarian Plain. Comparisons to specimens from the mountainous areas of western Central Europa (e.g. Switzerland) and the Balkans show greatest differences in length. The horn-cores of the mountain aurochses seem to be somewhat less strong and considerably shorter. This is not surprising at all since the aurochs is an animal of the plains (Szalay, 1924; no date), and therefore it certainly found less favourable living conditions in the mountains. Domestic cattle show the same phenomenon: even modern breeds have longer horns in plains than in mountains. Beside their length and largeness the Őrjeg horncores have one more thing in common: all of them have bone pearls around their bases, which is typical for aurochs bulls. On the other hand they vary slightly in their form. The horn-cores of the Szabadszállás skull go almost horizontally at their basis and their tips point in and upwards (Fig. 2). All other horn-cores turn downwards after a horizontal and lateral beginning. One of them (Fig. 5,c) has tips pointing simply upwards; all others tips point upwards and inwards at the same time. These latter horn-cores also have a more open form. These horn-core forms do not represent different systematical units (subspecies, geographical races or types) ; they are nothing but indicators of the variation within a given population. The horn form of the whole skull is undoubtedly less close to the typical aurochs of Central Europe. It resembles the lighter, southeastern subspecies whose extreme form was the Egyptian diluvial aurochs, a subspecies acoording to Requate (1957), however, not exactly identical with it. A similar horn-core was unearthed in the Early Copper Age site at Hódmezővásárhely—Tatársánc (Bökönyi, 1962). The other horn-cores of the Őrjeg peat-bogs point to the aurochs of Central Europe as for their downwards leaning; although, their open form is again a more southern characteristic. These aurochses were larger than the average of the species in Hungary. Using Matolcsi's indexes (Matolcsi, 1970) the withers height of the Holocene Hungarian aurochses varied between 1353.4 and 1557.4 mm, with an average of 1474.5 (on the basis of metacarpals' greatest length) and 1512.9 mm respectively (on the basis of the greatest length of meta23