Póczy Klára: Forschungen in Aquincum 1969- 2002 (Aquincum Nostrum 2. Budapest, 2003)

6. Die Wirtschaft Aquincums im Spiegel der neuen Funde - 6.3. Animals and Roman lifeways in Aquincum (Alice M. Choyke)

Aquincum - the town and its territórium Aquincum can be thought of as having existed in three parts: The legionary fortress around with the Military Town, the Civil Town and the surrounding territórium.

40 Examination of the animal bones from a variety of locations indicate that animal consumption customs differed according to social status and ethnic affiliation. For example inhabitiants of 'suburban' villages slaughtered their own animals and butchered them in a way that would have been familiar to their Celtic ancestors. The bones from these village sites represent all body parts of the slaughtered animals indicating that they were butchered on the spot. The bones themselves display the spiral fracturing characterisic of prehistoric fractured animal bone. (Fig 2a) In the Military Town, meat was procured from a centralized butcher. Thus, body parts are selected and the bones display regular chopping marks (Fig. 2b) The presence of half-finished worked bone products shows that there were bone manufacturing workshops scattered in the more industrial sections of the town. (Fig. 8) The faunal remains found in the Civil Town come mainly from older animals who must have been brought to the edge of town to be slaughtered once they were too old to be useful. Cattle predominates. After being slaughtered, skinned and roughly divided they were brought to centralized butchers in the town to be chopped and filleted into the parts and sizes which fit the traditional pots employed in Roman cuisine, as exemplified by Epicius. Only the house of Marcus Antonius Victorinus

4] contained the remains of piglets and lambs, reflecting his wealth and a more refined taste. Bones have also been studied from the area of the southern townwall where the so-called Fireman's collegium headquarters

42 was located. A small amphitheater north of the Civil Town was built during the AD 2

nd century to hold theater performances, gladiator fights and political 40 Detailed information on the layout of Aquincum can be found in this volume in the "Topography" chapter (5.). 41 Unpublished excavation O. Madarassy 1989-1991, Plan 6, Nr. 48, 58 and Plan 7, Nr. 1, 14. 42 ZSIDI 1997/4. Fig. 2. a. Bone broken in traditional manner resulting in spiral fracture compared to b. a bone chopped by a Roman butcher gatherings. Serious excavations there in the 19

th century

43 by Károly Torma

44 recovered a large number of remains from animals, mostly outside the walls of the arena. While bones from upper layers probably post dated the Roman occupation, three groups of bones found clustered together are worth mentioning: dog bones by the 3

rd supporting pillar, horse and oxen bones by the 7

th supporting pillar and autopodial bones from cow, mule, roe deer, wolf and wild boar together with scattered bones from horse, domestic pig and dog. The presence of wild animals in exactly this spot is surely of some significance since such finds are virtually non-existent elsewhere in Aquincum. The author also suggests that some of the bones may be from European bison which could not be indentified because of the lack of comparative specimens in the University comparative collections. The bones themselves have long since disappeared. The area stretching from the eastern edge of the Civil Town to the port on 43 The analysis of the material was carried out by Mr. József Szukáts and the identification of the bones by dr. Tivadar Margó. 44 TORMA op. cit. 100-102.