Horváth Attila – H. Tóth Elvira szerk.: Cumania 4. Archeologia (Bács-Kiskun Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei, Kecskemét, 1976)

S. Bökönyi: Szarmata lelőhelyek állatcsont leletei Bács-Kiskun megyéből

the eastern centre or from the western one through the Romans. Nevertheless, the strong similarity between the Celtic greyhound of Pilismarót—Basaharc and these Sarimtian greyhounds suggests that the western centre was their source. A final decision cannot be made, however, without studying dog skull materials of Sarmatian sites from Eastern Europe. The occurence of greyhounds as an independent dog breed in Sarmatian sites is interesting also from another viewpoint. It proves namely the presence of germs of a conscious animal breeding with the Sarmatians, thus outside the Roman Empire. Conscious animal breeding first appeared with the Scythians (Bökönyi, 1964,1968) and the Celts (Boessneck, 1961) in Central Europe. The Scythians practised it with the horse and the Celts with the dog. Horse and dog are the animal species which are the closest to man, it is quite understandable therefore that conscious breeding whose basic requirement is that man considers the domestic species in question not as a herd but as individuals started with them. The horse was predestined to it by its role as comrade-at-arms and in the case of dog the urban life-style of the Celts and the hunting, a favorite pastime of Sarmatian men were the impetus of keeping special animal breeds. Remains of domestic hens occur only in two sites, 9 bones of an adult individual in Kunszállás—Alkotmány Tsz and 3 bones of two juvenile individuals in Szabadszállás—Józan. AH three animals have a rather small size lagging far behind the large Roman hens. Hen keeping was never important with steppe peoples despite the fact that the Scythians played a decisive role in the introduction of this domestic bird to Europe — they introduced it first also to Hungary, however, the Celts and Romans, two settled peoples, started its large-scale keeping here. It is quite possible that the Sarmatians also took their hens from the Scythians, and apparently did not improve them with the large Roman breed. As for the wild species, the largest of them, the aurochs is represented by the distal half of a left metatarsal (Öregcsertő—Csorna puszta). Its distal width of 66 mm points to a rather small individual which still falls into the range of variation of this wild ancestor of our domestic cattle In all possibility it is an aurochs cow. Aurochs remains occur also in other Sarmatian sites of the Carpathian Basin, although they are always in an extremely small number. A Roman source also mentions the species from this region: according to an epigramm of the Emperor Hadrianus (Liber VI, 332) Traianus having defeated the Dacians, sacrificed from his booty, among others a goldstudded horn of a Dachn aurochs (urus) to Jove (Szalay, no date). Red deer remains were unearthed in three of the sites: an antler fragment in Szabadszállás-Józan, a right radius fragment in Orgovány-Király tanya, and a left metacarpal fragment in Kunszentmiklós-Bak ér. Unfortunately none of them can be measured. Comparing them to other red deer remains one can state that they are from medium size deers. The red red deer was the most commonly hunted animal in Sarmatian times. It was hunted not only for its meat but also for its skin and first of all for its antler, a very valuable raw mateiial of tool-making. The only wild swine bones, each an adult maxilla and mandible fragment, come from KunszentmiklósBak ér. They are probably from the same individual. The M

3 of the mandible fragment can be measured, its greatest length of 46 mm points to a medium size animal. The brown hare is represented by a scapula, femur and metatarsal fragment of one individual, and another femur fragmentof a second individual, both from Szabadszállás-Józan. Unfortunately none of the bone fragments can be measured, and the size of the animals can therefore not be determined. Hunting of brown hare was insignificant in the great abundance of wild game of prehistoric times, the number of hare bones started to increase with the Roman Imperial Period. The upswing of its hunting was probably connected with the appearance of greyhounds. The three plastron fragments of a pond tortoise were found in a pit of Orgovány-Király tanya. It is not impossible that they are intrusive there because tortoises often dig themselves into the soft soil of archaeological sites to hibernate, and since winter is their critical period they can easily die there. Therefore only such tortoise remains can undoubtedly be considered contemporary with the site which are found in undisturbed layers or show cut marks or burns. The pit of Orgovány-Király tanya did not seem disturbed which speaks for the contemporaneity of the tortoise remains but the remains don't show cut marks or burns which speaks against it, so the question remains unsolved. 61