Gaál Attila (szerk.): A Wosinszky Mór Múzeum Évkönyve 20. (Szekszárd, 1998)

László Bartosiewitz: Váralja-Várfő középkori állatcsontleletei

László Bartosiewicz MEDIEVAL ANIMAL BONES FROM THE CASTLE OF VÁRALJA-VÁRFŐ (WESTERN HUNGARY) Introduction Váralja is located in Transdanubia, southwestern Hungary, near the northeastern 150-200 m high foothills of the Mecsek mountains. The village lay in Tolna county, east of its modern border with Baranya county. The natural environment is characterized by gently rolling hills and streams. Due to its geographical position, this area of Hungary is exposed to alpine and especially mediterranean climatic effects that result in relatively warm and humid weather conditions. Excavations at the castle, directed by Dr. Zsuzsa Miklós of the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, revealed a largely uniform destruction layer that contained almost 1500 animal bones dated to the 13

th century period of the Árpád Dynasty. By the Middle Ages, differences may be expected in the compositions of faunal assemblages from castles, rural and newly emerging urban settlements respectively.

1 The animal bones under discussion here will make another contribution to a better understanding of the enviromnetal and social/economic conditions that influenced meat provisioning in medieval Hungary. Material and method Ninety-two percent of the over 1457 animal bones listed in Table 1 were identifiable to the species level. The only exception is sheep and goat, whose bones are often not distinguishable and so were sometimes listed together in the „sheep or goat" (Caprinae subfamily) category. Since most of the material was well preserved in relatively deep and at most secondary deposits, only a small degree of natural fragmentation and surface erosion/weathering were observed. The numbers of identifiable bone specimens (NISP) was chosen as a method of quantifying these animal remains, since estimating the number of individuals would have been especially erroneous in the case of this fragmented material which was concentrated within the castle's inside area. Signs of secondary deposition were observed in numerous cases, such as the frequent occurrence of dispersed dog bones that were usually enterred with their bodies more-or-less intact during the studied period. Faunal remains at this site were aged (Table 3, Figure 1) on the basis of tooth eruption and the epiphyseal fusion of long bones as summarized by Schmid

2 and classified into meat value categories (Table 4) using definitions by Uerpmann.

3 Bone measurements listed in the Appendix were taken following the international standard as published by Angela von den Driesch.

4 Results Cattle (Bos taurus L. 1758) Remains of cattle and pig made up over half of the bone fragments recovered. Even taking the typically heavy fragmentation of larger bones into consideration

5 one cow may provide five to ten times as much meat as a sheep or a pig.

6 Of the domesticates exploited for meat, cattle was represented by the highest proportion (almost 80%, Figure 1) of bones from mature animals. The presence of subadult and juvenile cattle is assumed to be more characteristic of rural 1 BARTOSffiWITZ 1995a. 2 SCHMID 1972. 3 UERPMANN 1973. 4 von den DRIESCH 1976 5 BINFORD and BERTRAM 1977, 6

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