Szakács Sándor szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1990-1991 (Budapest, 1991)

TAKÁCS ISTVÁN: The history of pig (Sus scrofa dorn L.) butchering and the evidence for singeing on subfossil teeth

who sticks the pig while sitting or kneeling on iL The pigs shown usually have long, coarse hair. Considering that these primitive forms of domestic pig are rather wild and muscular, the question arises whether a single man could have killed one of them all by himself. I witnessed the slaughter of pigs of a primitive breed. Four experienced caretakers of the pig farm and a professional butcher hired for the job could not control the animals. Although they could prepare the pigs for shipment in special containers (with great difficulty), they could notforce them out of these cages, since they were kicking and biting so violently. In the end, they had to be stabbed through the bars of the cages and bled to death in the container. It is not likely that such animals could have been killed by only one person without being tied down or using some sort of stunning. Some representations answer this question as well. On one of them the pig lies on the ground with its hind legs tied to a stake, while the pig-sticker forces one of the front legs backward. On other pictures from contemporary almanacs evidence of stunning is to be found: the man on such pictures often is shown holding a big club in his hand. This way of rendering domestic animals unconscious must be an ancient method. In archaeological bone assemblages much of the damage on pig, horse, sheep, and cattle skulls comes from having been bashed in. The previously listed representations also illustrate how important pig was in the human diet In addition to cooking the meat, its blood was also used in sausage making as is shown by the collection of blood depicted in these scenes of pig killing. The importance of the division of labor is also shown by the fact that the blood collection dish is always held by women, who were probably in charge of further processing this product Today this tradition survives very strongly. Fig. 18: Picture of pig-sticking from a Medieval almanac /Archive for the history of implements of the Hungarian Museum of Agriculture./