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6. Plain talk: animals, environment and culture inthe Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin and adjacentareas

Lszl Bartosiewicz

Introduction

Domestication is at the core of what V. Gordon Childetermed the Neolithic Revolution (Childe 1936). Sincethis revolution was neither instantaneous nor uniform,domestication has formed a topic that is of equal interestto archaeologists (Hodder 1990) and archaeozoologists(Clutton-Brock 1989). In the twentieth century, archaeo-zoological finds were routinely interpreted as index

fossils in palaeontology, i.e. indicators of the naturalenvironment. This introduced a degree of geographicaldeterminism in research that has often led to circularreasoning. Archaeological animal remains were in-fluenced by past human action. Environmental recon-structions based on these finds are biased by thisanthropogenic noise (Bartosiewicz 2001). This primaryhuman effect, however, is culturally idiosyncratic; wildanimals were hunted selectively, domestic animals couldbe herded far from their original habitats. Therefore, thedeposition of their bones in the form of food remains isfar from a proper representation of fauna of any sort.

The problem

In his early studies, Joachim Boessneck publishedNeolithic assemblages from Greece that became para-digmatic in the study of animal exploitation during theEuropean Neolithic. The pre-pottery and early Neolithiclayers at Argissa Magoula are characterised by sheep/goat and a small contribution of wild animals (Boessneck1962, 38).1 Animal remains from Arapi Magoula andOtzaki Magoula (Dimini culture) also show the over-whelming dominance of sheep and the lesser significanceof cattle and pig (Boessneck 1956, 710).

During an early Neolithic climatic optimum, animalhusbandry expanded northwards from the Balkans. This

advance may be traced archaeologically, in particularalong its northern frontier, in the variants of the Starevo/Krs/Cri culture in Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romaniarespectively. Some archaeozoological assemblages aresimilar to that of the pre-pottery Neolithic in Thessaly,although hunting, fishing and gathering complementeddomestic animal resources to varying extents.

The people of the Krs culture brought along acharacteristically south-eastern composition of livestock

(Bknyi 1993, 3). Sheep/goat remains dominated overthose of cattle. Bones of pigs and dogs occurred only ininsignificant numbers. This type of animal keeping wasrather ill-suited to the Carpathian Basin. Stocks of itsmost important species, sheep and goat, could not beupgraded by local domestication in the absence of thewild forms in the marshy environment. Moreover, as isshown by several bones with arthritic deformations, sheepof south-eastern origins were heavily stressed in thishumid and cool habitat (Fig. 6.1); Bknyi described anumber of such bones from Endrd 119, Hungary(Bknyi 1992a, 231). Pig keeping would have been an

ideal way to exploit the marshy floodplain; pigs need alot of water, and the rhizomes found in reed beds areamong the most favoured staple for wild pigs (Farag2002, 368).

Specialised aurochs hunting seems to have becomecharacteristic of the middle and late Neolithic in Hungary.Settlements offer evidence not only of aurochs hunting(Fig. 6.2) but also of bones from what Bknyi (1974,26) interpreted as crosses between domestic and wildcattle. Red deer lagged behind in terms of the number ofidentifiable specimens (NISP), in spite of the inclusion ofantler fragments with deer bone in early publications.The high contributions of cattle and pig in the earlyTripolye culture are comparable to those of the Tisza andHerply cultures in Hungary. It was Hanar (1956, 67)


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Lszl Bartosiewicz52

who first considered Tripolye culture hunting a superiorform with its concentration on the mighty aurochs.

Many of these observations have become topoi thatare worth re-evaluating in light of the evidence ofNeolithic animal exploitation in the Carpathian Basinand at a few sites of key importance in adjacent areas. Inthe area discussed here, the aforementioned trends maybe clearly seen in the chronological distribution ofNeolithic animal remains. Data from 53 sites publishedin the literature have been pooled by gross periods inTable 6.1 (Bartosiewicz 1984a; 1994; Bartosiewicz et al.1995; Bknyi 1959; 1964; 1969; 1974; 1981; 1984a;1984b; 1985; 1987; 1988; 1992a; 1992b; Bknyi andBartosiewicz 1998; Clason 1980; Schwartz 1994; Vrs1980; 1994; 1996; 1997). Bold face numbers in this tablemark categories of outstandingly high values.

As is seen in this table, the preponderance of sheep/

goat remains is indeed most characteristic in the earlyNeolithic, when the remains of pig and large game occur

in numbers far smaller than expected. During the middleNeolithic cattle and pig gain in importance and huntingremains rather insignificant. By the late Neolithic,however, a dramatic change takes place: the relativecontribution of sheep and goat is far less than expectedand large game hunting becomes extremely important.These trends are significant in formal statistical terms(c2=29,184.9, df=20, P0.000).

This change during the Neolithic has been known forlong, but considering that it took place within the largelyidentical natural environment of the Carpathian Basin,relatively little attention has been paid to its socio-culturalbackground by archaeozoologists. The gross evaluationof pooled sites also disregards subtle relationshipsbetween animal species.

Figure 6.1 (left) Arthrotic deformation of the distal end of a sheep metapodium (Ecsegfalva 23).Figure 6.2 (right) Aurochs atlas from PolgrCsszhalom with a stone projectile point embedded in the ventral arch(after Bknyi 1975). Size unknown.

Table 6.1. The observed and expected NISP values of various animal taxa in the assemblages of 53 sites pooled byNeolithic periods.

Species Early (21 sites) Middle (20 sites) Late (12 sites) Total

Observed Expected Observed Expected Observed Expected

cattle 10687 12215.8 3501 2050.4 13142 13063.7 27330

sheep/goat 25646 14858.3 1795 2494.0 5801 15889.7 33242

pig 518 3292.0 902 552.6 5945 3520.5 7365

dog 528 748.2 61 125.6 1085 800.2 1674

aurochs 1129 3759.5 422 631.0 6860 4020.5 8411

wild pig 986 2584.0 144 433.7 4651 2763.3 5781

red deer 2400 4436.2 207 744.6 7318 4744.2 9925

Total 41894 7032 44802 93728


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Plain Talk: animals, environment and culture in the Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin 53

Relationships between animal speciesInterspecific relationships between domesticates indeveloping countries have shown the complementaryroles played by various animals in meat production(Bartosiewicz 1984c, 200). A previous analysis ofNeolithic archaeozoological assemblages across Europehas revealed a similar dichotomy between ancienteconomies based on sheep/goat and pig keepingrespectively (Bartosiewicz 1990, 291, table 3). That study,however, did not reckon with the complementary role ofwild animals in Neolithic meat provisioning. The Numberof Identified Specimens (NISP) for mammals in the 53

individual archaeozoological assemblages under dis-cussion here have been subjected to a factor analysis inorder to outline interspecific relationships and theirimpact on major types of Neolithic animal exploitation.Decimal logarithms of the data were used in order toreduce the heteroscedasticity of data resulting frombroadly varying assemblage sizes. Factor loadings(homogenized using Varimax rotation) are summarisedin Table 6.2.

The two factors with latent roots greater than 1.0represent hunting and animal keeping. They en-compass 64.7% of total variance; i.e. these combinationsof animal species rather reliably reflect the overall pictureof Neolithic animal exploitation at the 53 settlements.While there remains unanswered the question of whether

the sharp wild/domestic dichotomy was of decisive

importance in Neolithic thinking, these patterns certainlydefine our modern interpretations of prehistoric sub-sistence on the basis of animal remains. According to themathematical interpretation, factors represent indepen-dent dimensions of the same phenomenon (i.e. huntingand animal keeping are, in principle, non-correlated).

Although the inclusion of antler in NISP in earlierpublications may result in the overrepresentation ofCervids, remains of large game form an evident complexowing to their co-occurrence at many sites. The presenceof wild pig and beaver, especially, are indicative offorested floodplain habitats.

The only domestic animal strongly associated withthis factor is dog which has had a special status amongdomesticates. At Mesolithic sites such as Lepenski Virand Vlasac in the Iron Gates (Bknyi 1969; 1975),domestic dog, the only domesticate, complemented dietsprocured by hunting and fishing. This role, however,seems to have persisted in prehistoric huntingcommunities long after the occurrence of other, meat-purpose domesticates. For example, in the late NeolithicFatyanovo culture of the Volga/Oka region (CentralRussia, third-mid-second millennium cal. BC), huntingplayed a significant role and dog bones were the mostfrequent among domestic animal remains (Bader 1937,23). The relative contribution of disarticulated dog boneswas also important in the Horgen and Lscherz culture

Table 6.2. Factor loadings showing the relationship between animal species at 53 Neolithic settlements.

Species Factor 1 Factor 2

Hunting Animal keeping

red deer (Cervus elaphus L. 1758) 0.903 0.183

wild pig (Sus scrofa L. 1758) 0.880 0.232

dog (Canis familiaris L. 1758) 0.850 0.289

aurochs (Bos primigenius Bojanus 1827) 0.774 0.336

roe deer (Capreolus capreolus L. 1758) 0.773 0.427

beaver (Castor fiberL. 1758) 0.594 -0.283

brown bear (Ursus arctos L. 1758) 0.581 -0.049

domestic pig (Sus domesticus Erxl. 1777) 0.493 0.381

domestic cattle (Bos taurus L. 1758) 0.513 0.646

sheep/goat (Caprinae Gray 1852) 0.113 0.866

brown hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas 1778) 0.311 0.837

wild ass (Asinus hydruntinus Regalia 1907) 0.192 0.685

small carnivores (Carnivora) 0.488 0.532

Latent root 5.091 3.314

Variance explained, % 39.2 25.5


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Lszl Bartosiewicz54

components at the settlement of St. Blaise Bains desDames in Western Switzerland (Bartosiewicz 1994, 63,figure 1). One interpretation may be that dog remainedan important supplement to the diet in economiesdependent on precarious hunters luck. The complex

cognitive role of dogs was illustrated by Whittle (2003,79) quoting ethnographic parallels. In the Hungarian lateNeolithic the burial of mask-like dog viscerocrania atthe Lengyel culture site of MrgyTzkdomb(Bartosiewicz 1994, 65, figure 2) supports the diversityof roles dogs must have played there. While it seemslikely that dogs served as hunting companions, their rolein herding is more difficult to appraise. The scarcity ofdog bones at Krs culture sites only shows that dogmeat did not consistently form part of the diet.

In Table 6.2, factor loadings of cattle connect the twoextreme forms of animal exploitation. Beef seems to have

been a staple in both basic types of economy. Pig is alsogenerally present, but as such has little diagnostic valuein characterising types of animal exploitation. Of thewild animals, ubiquitous small carnivores may have beenexploited for pelt or persecuted as vermin regardless ofthe type of animal exploitation.

The high factor loading for sheep/goat defines thesecond factor, animal keeping. This shows the impact ofearly Neolithic Krs and middle Neolithic Zselizassemblages in the data set. Most remarkably, sheep andgoat are followed by brown hare and wild ass, associatedwith open grassland habitats. This may be indicative ofthe environmental factor in sheep herding in different

ways: chronological (the early Neolithic climaticoptimum favoured these game species and they wereeasily exploited even by opportunistic hunting); andcultural (sheep and goat herders occupied drier, grasslandhabitats on levees and banks in a mosaic-like environmentthat these wild animals also preferred).

The distribution of animal species in the plane definedby the two factors is shown in Figure 6.3. Aside from thewild/domestic dichotomy, natural environment as abackground variable may also be recognised in this graph.Hunting must have been associated with forested habitats,

while open, dry grassland was better suited for thekeeping of domestic ruminants.

Chronological interpretations

Large game of the forest and domestic ruminants formtwo characteristic groups whose alternative exploitationmay be used in characterising Neolithic economies.Sheep/goat keeping reached south-eastern Europe fromsouth-west Asia, home to the wild ancestors of sheep andgoat, in the seventh millennium cal. BC. In Thessaly,domesticates introduced from south-west Asia thrived in

dry habitats closely resembling their native regions.Neolithic assemblages from both areas tend to becharacterised by the overwhelming dominance of sheep/goat remains (Bknyi 1993, 7). Wild animal remainsoccur in small numbers. The earliest Krs culture siteshave recently been dated to c.62006000 cal. BC in thearea under discussion here (Whittle et al. 2002, 107117). One of the archaeological questions is, to whatextent did the spread of this culture result fromcolonisation or indigeneous acculturation (Whittle et al.2002, 93). Attitudes to animals may be of help in at leastpartially answering this question.

When factor scores representing individual sites

calculated from the factor loadings of Table 6.2 are plottedagainst each other, a clear pattern emerges (Fig. 6.4).Krs culture assemblages fall into the upper section ofthe graph (grassland animals), while their late Neolithiccounterparts form a near-horizontal cluster with somemiddle Neolithic sites in the lower portion (floodplain

(UNTING

!NIMALKEEPIN

G

$OMESTIC

, ARGEGAME

/THERWILD

" EAR

" EAVER

'2!33,!.$ &/2%34#ATTLE

0IG

Figure 6.3. Relationships between animal species as expressed by factor loadings.


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forest). Outliers on the far right of the graph representearly Neolithic settlements with considerable amounts ofwild animal remains.

On the basis of only 202 (!) identifiable mammalianbones from the settlement of Maroslele-Pana, Bknyi(1964, 88) made an early attempt to outline animalexploitation in the Krs culture. His hypothesis was thatKrs culture animal husbandry had been a variant of

Thessalian animal keeping under different geographicconditions (Bknyi 1974, 56), ill-adapted to the marshyhabitats of the Great Hungarian Plain. Maroslele-Pana,however, turns out to have been a small and relativelyatypical site, located in the lower left cluster of data pointsin Figure 6.4. The 19631965 excavations at Rszke-Ludvr were the first to have yielded a rich Krs culturearchaeozoological assemblage (Bknyi 1974, 396).Partially excavated sites of the corresponding Cri culture(Necrasov 1961, 26572; 1964, 16781; Necrasov andHaimovici 1959, 563) were also studied in Romania.Large assemblages from the settlements of Gylart

(Bknyi 1974, 364) and ultimately from Endrd 119(Bknyi 1992a, 273) reconfirmed Bknyis hypothesesand also verified Necrasovs (1964, 167) observations.Characteristic Krs culture assemblages (Endrd 119,Ludas-Budzsk, Nosza-Gyngypart and Ecsegfalva 23)are clearly visible in the upper, grassland section ofFigure 6.4. Two early Neolithic assemblages of the relatedStarevo culture, Padina and Lepenski Vir, occur in thelower right half of the graph, indicative of the forestedalluvial environment of the Iron Gates Gorge, in whichhunting was of great importance. Meanwhile, a singlelate Neolithic data point in the top section of Figure 6.4represents late Neolithic layers at Karanovo (Bulgaria;Bknyi and Bartosiewicz 1998), fitting within the samepattern as typical Krs culture sites in Hungary; that

environment was ideal for the keeping of sheep and goatand represents the regional continuity of this tradition inour study. The remains of relatively small domestic cattleoccur in early Neolithic Krs culture assemblages in theCarpathian Basin dated to the sixth millennium cal. BC(Bknyi 1974, 26) as well as in Bandkeramik assem-blages in Germany by the fifth millennium cal. BC(Mller 1963, 1).

Large Krs culture assemblages in Hungary are alsosimilar to that of an early Neolithic Hamangia culturesettlement in Romania. At the site of Techirghiol on theBlack Sea Coast 89.5 % of the remains originated fromdomesticates, cattle and sheep/goat made up almost 95%of the domestic animal remains, the contribution of pigbones was negligible (Necrasov and Haimovici 1962,177). The fact that wild ass was the most commonlyexploited game at that site is indicative of a dry grasslandenvironment. At Krs culture settlements on the edge ofthe marshland in the Great Hungarian Plain, the remainsof wild animals with a preference for less humid habitats,

such as aurochs and wild ass, were also somewhat betterrepresented. Bknyi (1974, 21) even considered thebones of the latter to be the index fossil in the presumablyKrs culture contamination, at the middle NeolithicTisza culture settlement of Leb as well (Bknyi 1958,61). The combination of wild ass, brown hare and sheepand goat suggests that even limited Krs culture huntingconcentrated on grassland species. It may be presumed,however, that the natural fauna of the Great HungarianPlain was more or less the same in the early and laterNeolithic. The extinction of wild ass seems to be one ofthe few tangible differences between the beginning andthe end of the Neolithic. This species does not occur atany of the later sites.

Milking was already known during the Krs culture

(UNTING

!NIMALKE

EPING

%ARLY

-IDDLE

,ATE

Figure 6.4. The distribution of Neolithic settlements in the plane defined by the two factors.The main division betweenearly and late sites is indicated by a dashed line.


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Lszl Bartosiewicz56

Figure 6.5

1. oldal

0

1

2

3

4

aurochs

brownhare

wildswine

roedeer

domesticpig

reddeer

domesticcattle

domesticdog

sheep/goat

sheep

goat

Observed/ExpectedNISP

Tell

Horizontal

as is shown by Bovid milk remains on sherds from thesite of Ecsegfalva 23 in Hungary (Craig et al. in prep).Unfortunately, at this stage of research species iden-tification is not yet available. It may be hypothesised,however, that goats were probably more approachable for

this purpose than cattle. Iconographic evidence from thetemple of Nin-Hursag in Tell el-Obed, Iraq (after 2400BC: Bknyi 1974, 27; 1994, 22, Abb. 1) and Knossos(ca. 1500 BC: Bknyi 1974, 119, fig. 13) shows thatcows were being milked from the rear, as is usual withcaprines. From these pictures one may infer that cowmilking was modelled after that of small ruminants (i.e.early Neolithic traces of milk may be associated withgreater probability with sheep or goat).

With the exception of deer antler, correlations betweenthe taxonomic composition of bones from the food refuseand worked specimens are low (Choyke 1984): bone tool

manufacturing tends to utilise selected raw materials,and the aspects of selection are characteristic for eachculture. The dominance of sheep/goat bones in earlyNeolithic assemblages is also reflected in the artefactinventory. Aside from many ad hoc tools, there is aspecial Krs type of point with a distinctive looking flathandle, made on the distal end of the sheep/goatmetapodium, using the so-called groove and splittechnique.

Of the middle Neolithic groups defined by ceramicstyles, two have provided suitably large assemblages: theZseliz group of the Linear Pottery culture and the Tiszaculture in the early-mid fifth millennium cal. BC (Kalicz

and Raczky 1987, 28). In contrast with the early

Neolithic, when sheep/goat conquered eastern-centralEurope, cattle were by far the best represented domesticanimals in both of these cultures. In the Tisza culture,pigs were next, followed by sheep/goat and dogs. AtZseliz group settlements, however, sheep and goat always

preceded pigs and dogs in terms of NISP. Tisza cultureanimal keeping thus seems better adjusted to theenvironmental conditions of the Great Hungarian Plain,as based on domesticates whose wild forms (aurochs,wild pig as well as wolf) lived locally and were thusreadily available to early herders. While the upgrading ofdomestic cattle stock using aurochs bulls cannot bereconstructed, possible crossings with wild pig may havebeen sought on purpose to produce more vital offspring.Even today, wild pigs are attracted by crops in cultivatedzones separating settlements and woodland where theymay interbreed with domestic sows (Dorner 1925, 30).

Similar to the early Neolithic Krs culture, the highrelative frequency of sheep/goat bones at sites of the Zselizgroup may be interpreted as a somewhat exotic feature.However, these sites were not located in the marshland ofthe Great Hungarian Plain but in drier areas of north-central Hungary (e.g. BksmegyerVrs Csillag Tsz,Neszmly-Tekeres patak, Pilismart-Szobi rv).

Whereas during the Tisza culture period huntingincreased in significance (with a ratio close to 1:1 betweendomesticates to wild animals), the situation wasremarkably different at settlements of the Zseliz group,dominated by the remains of domesticates (c. 9:1). Thisdifference between sites may be recognised in Figure 6.4,

as the two types of middle Neolithic sites fall on either

Figure 6.5. The distribution of wild and domestic animal remains at the two sections of the Polgr-Csszhalomsettlement (after Schwartz 2002, 854).


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Figure 6.6. Probability distribution plots of the overall radiocarbon dates measured at four tell settlements in theGreat Hungarian Plain. The chronological overlap is marked by shading.

side of the dashed line marking the overall divisionbetween the early and late Neolithic types of animalexploitation. Zseliz group sites tend to cluster with theKrs culture, while Tisza culture settlements form atrend with late Neolithic sites below the line in Figure

6.4. The compositions of assemblages from the Zselizgroup in Hungary are also similar to those of the LinearPottery culture in central Germany (Mller 1964, 61).Notably, horse remains are absent from both middleNeolithic groups in Hungary.

While Bknyi (1974, 27) raised the possibility ofusing draught cattle in tillage during the middleNeolithic, primary osteological evidence in the form ofdeformed foot bones (Bartosiewicz et al. 1997) and hipsof overworked animals is rare and inconsistent, even inlater prehistoric periods in comparison with the Romanperiod or the Middle Ages which are characterised by

intensive agricultural production (Bartosiewicz in pressa).It may be hypothesised that by the late Neolithic,

especially in the Herply culture, animal keeping wasbetter established in absolute terms than it had been inthe preceding Tisza culture. Recent excavations atPolgrCsszhalom offered a unique opportunity tocompare animal bones from the tell and from the adjacent,horizontal rural settlement (Schwartz 2002, 853, table2). Over half of the animal remains in the tell originatedfrom wild animals, while domestic animal bonesdominated in the horizontal settlement (Fig. 6.5). Thisshows that animal husbandry played an important role in

everyday meat provisioning. However, the relative

contribution of domestic animal remains decreased incomparison to those of large game. PolgrCsszhalomand BerettyjfaluHerply represent extreme forms ofthis trend along the right hand edge of Figure 6.4,together with the two aforementioned early Neolithic sites

from the Iron Gates gorge.Between c. 55004000 cal. BC (Hertelendi et al. 1995,

242, table 1; 1998) a late Neolithic domestication feverseems to have swept across the largely coeval tellsettlements in the Great Hungarian Plain (Bknyi 1962).This hypothesis was based on an unusually high incidenceof aurochs remains at four of these complex, largelycontemporary sites, which are located within an areameasuring about 150km across (Fig. 6.6).

On the basis of medium size bovine bones it has beenhypothesised that such specimens were the evidence oflocal domestication. Subsequent studies, however, showed

that regional size differences in populations identified apriori as aurochs in south-eastern Europe (Bknyi andBartosiewicz 1987, 164) were blurred by great variabilityamong animals identified as domestic cattle. Sexualdimorphism evidently complicates the picture(Bartosiewicz 1984c; 1987) and may provide partialexplanation for the size overlap originally interpreted ascrosses between the wild and domestic forms. Oncehuman interference (domestication and possibly cas-tration) enters the picture, clear-cut sexual dimorphismin size (e.g. Bartosiewicz 1986) turns into yet anotherformidable puzzle.

The immense cultural importance of wild animals at

late Neolithic settlements is supported by the evidence of


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Lszl Bartosiewicz58

food remains and trophies, such as boar tusks placed inburials. The zoological study of bone jewellery fromPolgrCsszhalom revealed that, in addition to real reddeer canines, bone copies of the same tooth have beenstrung in great numbers on necklaces. Such imitations

were found mostly in womens graves (Fig. 6.7), whilean elderly woman of high status was ornamented withreal deer canines, usually worn by men (Choyke 2001,254). Imitation not only shows that real deer canineswere valued trophies, but also that not everyone had equalaccess to them. Combinations of real and imitation deercanine beads are also known from the middle Neolithiccemetery of Trebur, Germany (Spatz 1999, 422).

In general, at the tell settlements of the Herplyculture, cattle took the lead with pigs second and sheep/goat and dogs lagging far behind. This type of animalkeeping is strongly reminiscent of that of the Tisza culture

and had apparently originated from it, a hypothesis alsosupported by archaeological data (Bognr-Kutzin 1963,510).

The late Neolithic Tiszapolgr and Lengyel culturesalready represent a transition to the first period of theCopper Age. Animal keeping and hunting in the Lengyelculture survived from the late Neolithic and was stronglylate Neolithic in its character, reminiscent of the previousTisza and Herply cultures. Domestic animals slightly

dominate. Cattle remains were by far the most frequent,followed by the bones of pigs. Remains of sheep/goat anddogs were found in only small numbers. The remains ofaurochs and red deer occurred in comparable numbers.The contribution of aurochs was still high, as was the

case in the Tisza culture. Five Lengyel culture assem-blages form a small, distinct cluster among the lateNeolithic sites in the right side half of the graph in Figure6.4. According to Bknyi (1974, 50), specialised aurochshunting during the Hungarian Neolithic gave rise to thelocal domestication of cattle in the Linear Pottery as wellas Tripolye, Tisza, Herply, Lengyel cultures. Ambros(1961, 92) considered aurochs hunting a characteristicfeature of the late Neolithic in Slovakia, and this largegame maintained its significance at Lengyel culture sitesthere as well.

Assemblage size and sampling bias

On the basis of his early studies, Bknyi posited thatanimal keeping and hunting were of similar importancein Krs culture economies. His observation was that atsome settlements animal keeping had dominated while atothers hunting had. Krs culture assemblages in thelatter group, however, tend to be small. This means thatwild animals would be over-represented in relative termseven by only a few bones. Mammalian bones from 17Krs culture sites show a high and statistically sig-nificant (R=0.620; P0.032) Spearman rank correlationbetween NISP and the percentage contribution of

domesticates (Bartosiewicz in press b). The importanceof hunting is represented by rather small assemblages,while convincingly large samples all show theoverwhelming dominance of sheep/goat remains. Bycontrast, the evidence for hunting is much moreconvincing in the case of middle and especially lateNeolithic settlements.

The number of animal species identifiable in anassemblage is also a function of NISP. The averagenumber of identifiable specimens was 2097 in early (21sites), 671 in middle (20 sites) and 2760 in late Neolithic(12 sites) assemblages. The average number of species

was 12 in the early materials and 11 each in the middleand late Neolithic periods. Of these, five originated fromdomesticates (cattle, sheep, goat, pig and dog) that werepresent at almost all sites. The remaining species are allwild animals, possibly represented by only a few frag-ments, best seen in unusually large assemblages.

The number of animal species identified at any sitedepends on assemblage size (Grayson 1984, 137).Increasing the number of bones identified, however, isfollowed by the discovery of new taxa in a degressivemanner. When decimal logarithms of the number ofspecies identified are plotted against the number ofidentifiable specimens in all assemblages (Fig. 6.8), thelargely linear trend may be expressed by the regressionequations shown in Table 6.3.

Figure 6.7. Imitation red deer canine necklace from awomans grave in PolgrCsszhalom (after Choyke2001).


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Period Number of Regression Integration Correlation Level of

sites coefficient probability

Early 21 0.147 0.658 r = 0.639 P 0.010Middle 20 0.092 0.756 r = 0.558 P 0.010Late 12 0.153 0.614 r = 0.903 P 0.000

Coefficients of correlation show a moderate butsubstantial relationship between the two variables in theearly and middle Neolithic samples. A very high linearcorrelation was found in the case of the small, lateNeolithic sample.

These 0.0920.149 coefficients of regression aresmaller than those observed at rural settlements of RomanPeriod Sarmatian (b=0.199) and of early MedievalHungarian ones (b=0.217) (Bartosiewicz 2003, 115, table6), not to mention of urban settlements in both Romanperiod Pannonia (b=0.257, Bartosiewicz 19901991, 109)and Medieval (1116th C) towns (b=0.335, Bartosiewicz1995, 21), where even small, but concentrated assem-blages contained a rich variety of species. In the Neolithicsettlements analysed in this study, the great variety ofspecies results from the contribution of large assemblagesin the early and late Neolithic periods. The high,

statistically significant correlation (r=0.903) obtained forlate Neolithic sites shows that increasing assemblage sizeis more consistently related to taxonomic richness thanin the other two Neolithic periods.

The practical significance of these calculations maybe best appraised in the case of Krs culture animal

remains from Transylvania and western Moldova(Romania; Necrasov 1961, 268). Domesticates dominatedin five small assemblages (i.e. 49300 bones). Thecontribution of wild animals sometimes reached 50%.Results of the Spearman rank correlation between

assemblage sizes and the percentage contribution ofdomesticates show that these sites do not represent animalkeeping and hunting as reliably as would have beensuggested thirty years ago by the interpretation of Bknyi(1974, 56). Moreover, the observation that the presenceof wild animal remains (mostly red deer and wild pig),was not as varied as at contemporary settlements inHungary should also be treated carefully in light of thelinear regression analyses summarised in Table 6.3.While Bknyi (1974, 56) attributed this difference tothe geographic milieu, it is also clearly biased by thesmall size of these samples.

Concluding remarks

When the percentage of bones from locally domesticableanimals (i.e. cattle and pig) are combined and comparedto those of sheep/goat, an almost complete inversion in

Table 6.3. Parameters of the linear regression equations showing the relationship between the decimal logarithms ofassemblage size and taxonomic richness.

Figure 6.8. The relationship between taxonomic richness and sample size.

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