A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Archaeologica 7. (Szeged, 2001)

BARTOSIEWICZ László: A vándorlás és a letelepedettség jellegzetességei az újhartyáni lelőhely állatcsontleleteinek tükrében

MIGRATION AND SEDENTISM IN LIGHT OF THE ANIMAL BONES FROM UJHARTYÁN (CENTRAL HUNGARY) László BARTOSIEWICZ Rescue excavations at the 50 by 20 m section of the M5 national highway southeast of Budapest, brought to light an assemblage of animal bones that represented three, temporally discontinuous pastoral communities that inhabited this small elevation. The earliest of these were Sannatians, who occupied the site during the Roman Period. That time the area under discussion here belonged to the so-called Barbaricum, the section of the Great Hungarian Plain that bordered the Roman province of Pannónia on the east. Cenmries after the fall of the Roman Empire, Late Avar Period (AD 8th century) settlers inhabited this site. Yet another, early medieval occupation is represented by the remains of a rural settlement dated to the AD 13th century Period of the Árpád Dynasty. These chronological entities are represented by a decreasing number of animal bones at the site. All of them are represented by a high percent of cattle and caprine remains in terms of the number of identifiable bone specimens. The perccntual proportion of horse bones is also relatively high in all three sub-assemblages, although the small Avar and Árpád Period samples are not reliable for the purposes of characterizing animal keeping tradition. In AD 732, Pope Gregory the 3rd banned the consumption of horse flesh in the Christian world. The ideology of this ruling was rooted in a decree by the missionary Winfried Bonifatius from AD 715 which denounced the consumption of horse flesh on hygienic grounds. Especially in the young Hungarian Kingdom, banning horse flesh meant direct confrontation with pagan, pastoral tradition. It remains a question, however, to what extent this ruling was reinforced in 13th century Hungary. A normative interpretation of all three periods represented at this site should be limited to the establishment of patterns in meat consumption. Since all three communities were of eastern origin and practiced pastoral animal keeping prior to their gradual transition to a more sedentary way of life in the Carpathian Basin. The apparent importance of sheep and horse fits a well known cultural pattern. Although beef must have been the most important source of animal protein, cattle is of less indicator value in terms of cultural preferences. The small but steady contribution of pig remains in all periods is, on the other hand, conspicuous. The presence of this species is usually interpreted as a sign of increasingly sedentary agriculture at most archaeological site. Bartosiewicz László Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Régészettudományi Intézet 1088 Budapest Múzeum körút 4/B E-mail: hl0459bar@helka. iif.hu These general trends are most clearly expressed in the relatively large Sarmatian Animal bone assemblage, but may also be transposed to the two subsequent periods represented only by insignificant numbers of animal bones. Evidence of faunal data from several sites in the Great Hungarian Plain show that the character of transforming pastoral lifeways was remarkably similar, regardless of chronological/cultural affiliations. Key factors behind this similarity are the same environment in Eastern Hungary, which facilitated the maintenance of certain pastoral elements in animal keeping of populations that practiced fundamentally similar forms of animal husbandry. When proportions of the main domestic ungulates from the three periods of the Ujhartyán settlement are fit within the chronological series of relevant sites in Hungary (Fig. 6), the generally low percentages of pig remains suggest that meat consumption at this site was adopted to the grassy plain environment. On the other hand, all three chronological components of the site are relatively late in their respective periods, so this sign of mobile pastoralism may show adherence to earlier lifeways in a new environment. The relatively small contributions of horse remains, on the other hand, may be related to dietary customs associated with somewhat advanced sedentism. Horse keeping probably remained important but more specialized, so that the meat of this animal lost its significance. Further research is needed, however, to fine tune these stereotypical observations on the basis of larger data sets. Glossary of animal names used in tables: Marha=cattle (Bos taurus) Juh=sheep (Ovis aries) Kecske=goat (Capra hircus) J/K=sheep/goat (Caprinae) Sertés=domestic pig (Sus domesticus) Ló=horse (Eguus caballus) Kutya=dog (Canis familiáris) Tyúk=domestic hen (Gallus domesticus) Lúd=goose (Anser sp.) Nagy=non-identifiable large ungulate Kicsi=non-identifiable small ungulate Madár=non-identifiable bird Meghatározatlan=non-identifiable Összesen=total Translated by the Author