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)

come from whole carcasses, that is, bones from all parts of the carcass may be found on sites where finer excavations techniques were employed. However, there is no way of telling whether birds were kept around the town and smaller settlements since they represent easily 'movable' goods. There have been no finds of eggs, even from burials as grave offerings, although we know that eggs were a part of the diet. There is no evidence for carp farming or other form of fish keeping in ponds from Aquincum. Altogether, a grand total of two pike bones have come to light from a Celtic-Roman settlement west of the Civil Town and a settlement (as well as one sturgeon bone from this same area) just south of the Military Town respectively. However, numerous Cyprinidae (carp family) remains were recovered from a site along Bécsi Street where screening was regularly carried out by the excavating archaeologist. The lesson is clear. These were all most likely fished directly out of the nearby Danube river by this Romanized native population to supplement the meat diet from domesticates. Animals in the diet One of the aspects of the faunal material from the more recent excavations at Aquincum is the wide variety of sites it derives from. Because assemblages exist from such variable sources, in principal it should be possible to say quite a bit about differences in the meat diet between different social groups. Cattle, sheep/goat, pig and chicken provide the basis of the meat diet. (Fig. 1) The information available to date makes it clear that in the Aquincum towns, remarkably little game was consumed. Fish may have been important for certain dishes or as a supplement to the diet for all but that is still unclear. Horse and dog were not eaten at Aquincum. In addition to the fact that bones from these two species bones are very rare they are usually unbroken and show no sign of butchering although horse bone may have skinning marks on the extremity bones. Differences seem to exist between the various parts of Aquincum, the villafarms and the close by military forts of Albertfalva and Campona, although a great more work needs to be done to clarify why these difference exist. The Civil Town Three sites from the Civil Town serve to illustrate the eating habits of better off people who lived there in the end of the 1

st

, 2

nd and 3 rd centuries.

66 Table 2, which shows the skeletal part distribution from the Civil Town shrine site provides a typical example of refuse bone in the town.

67 (Tab. 2) At all three sites cattle was most important, comprising up to 70% of the everyday diet, as for example, at the Firemen's Headquarters. (Fig. 7) The same picture is also shown by a small material from the canabae of the Military Town (BÖKÖNYI 1974, 351) where cattle dominates.

68 Although there are bones from every part of the skeleton, they tend to be chopped up with heavy metal tools. These large bones can be chopped lengthwise and even the dense short bones are chopped across. (Fig. 4) The butchers work66 The Civil Town shrine was excavated in the early 1990's but has not been published due to the death of the excavator, Erzsébet Marity, Plan The dwelling of Victorinus was excavated slightly earlier (see note 41.)- While the archaeological and faunal material has been identified actual analysis has been put off until the stratigraphie clarification of the faunal material is complete. Both excavations were carried out prior to planned reconstruction of the 2

nd-3

rd century structures. The analysis of bones from the Firemen's Headquarters (ZSIDI 1997/4) is complete. 67 Because this end of the first beginning of the 2

nd century material has not been published before, skeletal part distributions are also provided here. Only cattle remains were found in the pit next to the shrine and over 1/3 of the bones was made up by rib fragments. While cattle also dominated in the assemblage from the shrine, bones from this animal were only twice as many as from pigs. Anatomically, the cattle remains not only included remains of high meat value: numerous short bones, metatarsals and phalanges of the metapodium belong to the commercially less important of the animals. Once the shrine ceased to function the area was leveled and filled in with debris from the nearby shrine complex. The bones here may very well represent the remains of food offerings. 68 While the numbers here are truly very small and the material was not screened the trends in species proportions are repeated.