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)

ing in the meat shops of the Civil Town must have been immensely strong. The idea is to pot-size cuts of meat for stews and to allow the rich tasty nutrient marrow to get into the food.

69 Sometimes the butchers chopped the meat from the leg bones to produce fillets. The evidence for this are overlapping shallow chop marks running down the diaphyses of long bones of c attle legs, particularly humerus and femur. (Fig. 5) One of the most common bones from cattle are ribs which have cut off from the vertebrae. (Tab. 2) Sometimes these ribs even have long striations where diners scraped the last bits of tasty meat from them. Finally, a total of three complete scapulae from cattle have been recovered from the Civil Town. All have a hole through the blade where the shoulders were hung, probably for smoking. (Fig. 6) Curiously enough there is no evidence of such smoked meat being eaten in the Military forts studied here. This latter is strange because such bones are relatively common at Roman military sites in England and Holland.

70 Smoked meat exports from Pannónia and Gaul were well known in the Roman Empire and these specimens show it was consumed locally as well. 69 BARTOSIEWICZ op. cit. 630-632. also see: Grant, A, Some Observations on Butchery in England from the Iron Age to the Medieval Period. Anthropozoologica Premier Numéro Special, Paris, 1987, 53-58. 70 LAUWERIER op, cit, 195. Also see: Izard, K., The Animal Bone. In: (Ed. T. Wilmott) Birdoswald excavations of a Roman Fort on Hadrian's Wall and its successor settlements, 1987-1992, English Heritage Archaeological report 14, 1997, 369. At the military fort at Birdoswald on Hadrian's Wall 17 of the 65 cattle scapulae had such holes in them. Izard also interprets this as a sign of smoking and further that the shoulders were smoked at the fort. Pit Shrine cattle cattle sheep goat sheep/goat Pig dog hen human horn core 3 3 1 1 skull fragment 4 5 1 1 1 Mandibula 8 4 1 3 Vertebrae 1 4 1 1 Rib 10 12 2 Scapula 1 2 Humerus 1 2 1 1 1 Radius 4 Ulna 1 2 1 Metacarpus 2 Pelvis 3 1 1 Femur 2 2 Tibia 5 4 1 short bone 3 1 Metatarsus 10 1 Phalanges 4 1 NISP total 28 64 4 2 3 21 1 1 1 Tab. 2. Skeletal Part distribution at the Civil Town Shrine and Adjacent Refuse Pit Most of the bone remains from cattle come from adult or mature animals which must mean that Romans, even the better off ones, tolerated rather chewy meat. The bones from sheep are not particularly common at these three sites in the Civil Town, amounting to between 10 and 15% of the total bones. (Fig. 3) Goat bones are even rarer. At the Firemen's Headquarters there even seems to be a slight decline in their numbers which mirrors the situation in the province. With the exception of the faunal material from Victorinus' dwelling, not quantified here, the bones are from adult individuals. Over half the sheep or goat bone from this house however, did not have fused epiphyses. In other words they came from lambs, a much greater delicacy and therefore more expensive. The bone parts found in the Civil Town shrine come from meaty regions, the pelvis and ribs. (Tab. 2 and Fig. 3) Pig in the Civil Town shows a more variable picture. It is dangerous to draw conclusions on the basis of such small numbers but it is safe to say that pig was eaten slightly more often than