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

less, since the subfossil aurochs remains of these collections have come almost exclusively from prehistoric and early historic settlements, they are rather fragmentary. The bone sample unearthed in a settlement consists in essence, of kitchen remnants ; therefore it seldom contains whole skeletons, skulls or larger skull fragments. Even whole horn-cores are extremely rare; most of the extremity bones are broken up for the marrow. In spite of the numerous specimens this is certainly a disadvantage of settlement materials. First of all this is the reason for the lack of our knowledge about body proportions and size variation of the extremity bones of the aurochs. Secondly the variation of skull and horn form is not yet well enough known. The aurochs remains of the Őrjeg peat-bogs kept in the Katona József Museum in Kecskemét, in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest and in the collection of the Arany János School, Kecel (BácsKiskun County) can provide very good information Fig. 1 concerning these questions. These bones represent, at least in their largest part, not kitchen remnants but skeletal parts of animals drowned in the swamps. On the other hand some of them could certainly be connected with human activities, e. g. a left horn-core in the Katona József Museum (65. 3. 87) which is burned and some extremity bones with cut marks. All three sites are in the peat-bogs of the Őrjeg channel (Fig. 1). As a matter of fact the Örjeg is a remnant of the old Danube River bed running down parallel ca. 20 km East of the recent riverbed in Bács-Kiskun County. The site Szabadszállás-Tőzegtelep is ca. 40 km West of Kecskemét. Turf exploitation has been going on there for about 20 years, and the finds were collected along with some artifacts from the Neolithic and Bronze Age. However, determinations showing connections between the artifactual and osteological material have not been yet successful. In 1964 Mr. A. Horváth, director of the Katona József Museum and the author, conducted a small scale excavation at the site. It yielded some insignificant animal remains and no artifacts; however, the test sondage cut through the bog in its entire depth and gave an opportunity for collection of turf samples for a palynological study. Both other sites are in the vicinity of the village of Kecel. Kecel-Rózsaberki dűlő lies on the eastern bank of the channel near the bridge of the Kecel — Kalocsa highway. In 1965 an almost complete aurochs skeleton was found there and got to the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest. From the large-scale turf exploitation of the third site, Kecel-Tőzegtelep, Mr. S. Nagy, the director of the Arany János School in Kecel got some aurochs bones that are in the school now. In 1959 author collected a small bone sample from the site. This sample is again in the Hungarian National Museum. Neither of these latter sites yielded any archaeological objects associated with the animal remains. The study of the turf samples of SzabadszállásTőzegtelep was done by Dr. M. Faragó-Miháltz of the József Attila University, Szeged. According to her report the sand of the riverbed represents the post-glacial Pine-Birch Period and the turf layers above it give an almost uninterrupted sequence of the Holocene (Table 1). The Beech Period (Late Neolithic — Bronze Age) is the only one which is 18