Alba Regia. Annales Musei Stephani Regis. – Alba Regia. Az István Király Múzeum Évkönyve. 20. 1980 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: C sorozat (1983)
Tanulmányok – Abhandlungen - Bartosiewicz László: Animal remains from a Medieval cess-pool. p. 169–180.
ANIMAL REMAINS FROM A MEDIEVAL CESS-POOL Introduction^) This paper is the first publication on the faunal material from Székesfehérvár—Sziget, a Medieval cloister belonging to the order of Maltese Knights, being excavated by Gyula Siklós i.( 2 ) Although the animal bones coming from the site number several thousands and require a more time-consuming, detailed quantitative analysis, the small material presented here is of special interest. It comes from a 1.6 meters deep cess-pool excavated between squares 48 and 59 of the site, on April 28, 1980. The cess-pool was built around the end of the 14 th century and belonged to the convent hall of the cloister. The closed assemblage of artifacts has provided vessels from the middle of the 15 th century to the beginning of the 16 th century, among them an almost complete Dreihausen cup. According to Gyula Siklósi the majority of vessels were probably thrown into the cess-pool during the Turkish conquest of Székesfehérvár in 1543 (Fig 1). Material and Method The bone material recovered from the cess-pool contains 162 bone specimens. They are highly fragmented, particularly those coming from larger animals. Unfortunately, the lack of sufficient numeric data did not allowthe use of reliable statistical calculations. Although the minimum number of individuals and some mean values of measurements could be estimated, during the analysis of the data, these results did not provide accurate information. In addition, due to special circumstances of the archaeo(1)1 should like to gratefully acknowledge my colleagues for kind consultations offered during my work. However, any mistakes and misinterpretations it the final form of this paper I claim as my own. (2) I am indebted to Gyula Siklósi for entrusting me with the study of this material belonging to an assemblage of artifacts of great importance. logical context, the qualitative,morphological characteristics of the bones had relatively greater importance than is the case for large assemblages, which permit the efficient use of statistics. As a consequence of these qualities a short description of each bone specimen is given, in order to provide a detailed view and allow for verification of the archaeological reasoning. The data on the bones are shown in a tabulated form based on a simplified decimal code system specially created for the purposes of this paper. Its format is limited to the species and kinds of bones studied here. The six digit code goes as follows: 3 class 1 species 10 bone 01 serial number Taxonomic code Anatomical code Individual code (The code as written above for example, refers to the cat's scapula in the material — thus 31 10 01. Each class of Vertebrata has its separate bone codes). The codes were not simply used to structure the material, but also serve as reference numbers in the text. Decoding maybe carried out by reading the tables. Discussion The bone sample recovered from one of the convent hall cess-pools can not be considered to represent the faunal character of a site as a whole. The basic assumption that the bone material found during the excavation of archaeological objects reflects predominantly the amount and kind of animal products consumed is restricted and broadened in this case, by a special consideration. In order to qualify 169
