Estók János szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 2005-2007 (Budapest, 2007)

GYŰJTEMÉNYEK - Körösi Andrea: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Régészeti Állatcsontgyűjteménye

The animal-bone collection at the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture ANDREA KÖRÖSI The independent animal-bone collection at the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture was established in 1964 by the director of that time, János Matolcsi therefore the collection is well-known as Matolcsi-collection. However, the collecting work concerning animal bones began earlier. At first mostly skulls and horns were gathered which came from the Millenary Exhibition of 1896. Only few animal bones were preserved for the posterity from the time period between 1896 and 1950 because of the devastation during WW2, They are called old museum material' in the inventory. After WW2 the collecting work started again in 1951. Most objects belonging to the subject matter were put into the so called Animal-breeding Collection. Some objects collected between 1951 and 1963 were lost during the years and the revolution of 1956 or they deteriorated. In the early 1960s the tasks were modified and the collections were modernized by the museum by considering scientific development. The Animal-breeding Collection was dissolved and its material was distributed among the new collections. From that time the collecting work was continued in two fields. On one hand they began to collect and elaborate the animal bones coming from archaeological excavations and the Museum got connected with the archaeological explorations. On the other hand they started to collect the bones of still existent animal species systematically which were necessary for comparative examinations and statistical evaluations, as well. On the basis of this the collection can be divided into two parts: the comparative and the archaeological animal-bone collections. The collection contains 1,383 stock items (36,899 pieces) of bone material still existent animal species, 10,769 stock items (16,513 pieces) of archaeological bone material and several sacks of archaeological animal bones awaiting elaboration. In the comparative animal-bone collection the bones of 89 contemporary animal species can be found. 43 of these are mammals, 33 of them are birds, there is one reptile and 12 fish species. The number of the mammal bones is 32,301 bones belonging to 1,322 items, 80.7% of which (25,962 pieces) is represented by domestic animals. The number of the domestic animal species is 12: buffalo, rabbit, sheep, goat, dog, horse, cat, mule, pig, ass, cattle and camel. In the case of 5 domestic mammals (sheep, dog, horse, pig and cattle) and 2 domestic fowls (hen and goose) the bones of various species have been preserved. The skeleton of several famous brood animals can be found in the collection. The most famous of them is the „wonder mare" called Kincsem which won all of her 54 races. 34 bird species belong to the collection, too. 4 species of them (pigeon, hen, goose and duck) represent the domestic fowls. There are 30 wild bird species with predatory, water- and terrestrial birds. Our 11 fish species used to live or are still living in lakes and rivers of Hungary. They are the grass carp, bighead carp, pike, Danube trout, bream, pikeperch, European weis, barbel, carp and sturgeon. Two jaws of one sea-fish species, the saw-fish can be also found in the collection. Most of the animal bones coming from archaeological excavations were collected by János Matolcsi. The material of 104 excavation sites was put into the archaeological animal bone collection. 63 of these sites have already been