Régészetünket gyakori keleti hatások jellemzik. Ezek olykor bonyolult folyamatok révén érvényesültek. A hazai régészeti állattan a romantika korában jelent meg, az orientalizmus, a „mesés Kelet” mítosza hatotta át. A cikk a jelképértékű tevék és lovak koponyaalkati vonásait tárgyalva e szemlélet túlélését mutatja egyes leletek mai értelmezésében.

Hungarian archaeology was affected by Eastern influences, manifested through complex processes. Archaeozoology in Hungary emerged in the Romantic era, permeated by Orientalism, the myth of the “fabulous East”. The survival of this view in the interpretation of a recent find is shown through the example of interpreting cranial features of camels and horses, beasts of great symbolic value.

Historical texts suggest that medieval Christianity condemned the consumption of horsemeat (hippophagy) yet also indicate that this practice persisted. Here, the authors review the contribution of horse to food refuse at 198 settlements across medieval Hungary, highlighting variability in food practices through time and space. Examination of these zooarchaeological assemblages indicates that hippophagy continued after the general conversion to Christianity in the eleventh century but substantially declined following the Mongol invasion (AD 1241–1242) and disappeared by the mid-sixteenth-century Ottoman occupation. Diachronic and geographic trends in this practice reveal ambiguity in food customs, reflecting complex (social, religious and ethnic) local identities.

Lynx remains are rare in archaeological assemblages. The skeleton of an adult male accompanied by four dogs was found in a large Migration Period pit at Zamárdi–Kútvölgyi-dűlő II, Hungary. Extant lynx skeletons were used in estimating the shoulder height of this individual. Its stature is comparable to those of the large dogs it was buried with. None of the five skeletons showed skinning marks. Although the physical reconstruction of the lynx was of help in appraising this special pit, the actual nature of the deposit remains in question. Possible interpretations range from the mundane discard of carcasses to the poorly understood ritual burial of carnivores, beginning with the lynx. We reviewed these options within the framework of cultural diversity of Migration Period peoples in west-central Hungary.

A Kárpát-medence őskori halászatára vonatkozó régészeti állattani adatok hiányát gyakran a nem megfelelő gyűjtési módszerekkel magyarázzák. A halcsontok törékenységük és kis méretük miatt észrevétlenek maradhatnak a kézi gyűjtés során, az így létrehozott leletegyüttesek aránytalanul jobban képviselik a nagy állatfajokat. Cikkünk a Duna jobb partján fekvő Százhalombatta-Földvár bronzkori tell lelőhelyéről egy évtizeden keresztül vett talajmintákban talált állatmaradványok elemzésén alapul. A 20 × 20 m-es feltárási területen véletlenszerűen kiválasztott oszlopokban vett 10 l-es minták flotálása után maradt nehéz frakció állattani leleteit vizsgáltuk. Tanulmányunk alapfeltétele a mintavételi módszer következetes kidolgozása volt. Oszlopmintákat vizsgáltunk, amelyek egymás fölötti, in situ állapotokat rögzítenek. A halcsontleletek mennyiségének összehasonlítása a feltárt felület ezen részei között elengedhetetlenné vált annak megértéséhez, hogyan és miként járulnak a leletgyűjtés módszerei az őskori halászat jobb megértéséhez. Elemzésünk eredményei szerint a finom feltárás rendszertanilag nehezebbenmeghatározható, de mennyiségileg jobban értékelhető adatokkal szolgál. Emiatt kevésbé a korabeli halfauna értékelésére alkalmas, mint inkább a halfeldolgozás és -fogyasztás térbeli szabályszerűségeinek hiteles rekonstrukciójára. A nehéz frakcióban azonosítható halmaradványok jól tükrözik a teljes állattani anyagban korábban talált halmaradványok alapján körvonalazott képet. A halak étkezési szerepe csekély volt, az alkalomszerű halászat a tavaszi és nyári hónapokban lehetett a legintenzívebb. Ez egybeeshetett a halak kültéri fogyasztásával, amit a nehéz frakcióból kinyert halcsontok térbeli eloszlása is megerősít a lelőhelyen.

Animal domestication led to changes in the interaction between animals and humans, including new ways of exploitation, which could potentially leave lesions on the animals' bones. This study aims to examine changes in the prevalence of pathological manifestation following changes in human-animal interactions as a result their domestication. For this purpose, we studied 19,565 animal remains recovered from archaeological excavations, dated from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period to historical periods and assigned the pathologies into types. Of these, 60 animal remains presented pathological lesions. The suspected pathological cases were validated using a microscope, X-ray, and/or micro-CT scan. Lesions were divided into four categories: trauma, aging/musculoskeletal stress marks (MSM), periodontal diseases, and inflammatory processes. Then, our database was combined with previously published data to a total of 26,596 animal remains, out of which 128 demonstrated pathological lesions. We found that the prevalence of lesions in animals was higher in the historical periods compared with prehistoric periods. Moreover, based on a comparison between recent gazelles living in captivity and those living in the wild, we found that captivity resulted in the deterioration of the animals' health. We concluded that pathologies were more frequent in livestock in historic periods, in comparison with wild species and livestock from earlier periods. Such lesions were common not only in working livestock (cattle and donkeys) but also in non-working domesticates (caprines and chickens) and companion animals (dogs and cats). Variations in the pathological frequencies between these three categories may be attributed to differences in exploitation, including the intensification of farming and herding. Finally, this study provides a unique reference dataset for zooarchaeologists when studying ancient animal assemblages. 

Carbon (δ¹³C), nitrogen (δ¹⁵N), and strontium (^87/86Sr) isotope analyses have been applied widely over the past four decades to reconstruct human and animal dietary and mobility patterns. Sulfur (δ³⁴S) has recently shown great promise to further enhance isotope analyses of the geologic and hydrologic contexts in which organic material formed. For this case study we applied this suite of multi-isotopic analyses to a dataset of 45 animal bones and teeth from the urban Viking Age town of Birka located in present-day Sweden. This research falls in line with previous studies as a potential way to bridge the understanding of relationships between centers and hinterlands by tracing socioeconomic networks of subsistence and food provisioning utilizing the animal economy as a proxy. The utilization of δ³⁴S values enables terrestrial, marine and freshwater food niches to be disentangled when δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values may be overlapping between each of the niches. The incorporation of five ^87/86Sr samples further allowed us to carefully interpret the movement of animals across the landscape. We identified cattle potentially originating > 180 km from Birka during the earliest stages of occupation (early 8th century CE), while pigs and ovicaprids were more locally reared, indicating the dimensions of the early market economy in the Viking period was complex and multifaceted.

Of all domestic animals, dogs (Canis familiaris Linnaeus, 1758) have developed the tightest bond with humans during the history of civilization. Regardless of their chronological affiliation, articulated dog skeletons discovered in structured deposits show individuals within their biological contexts; their ageing and sexing are usually possible and even pathological histories can be reconstructed. This presentation is a concise review of five Migration Period (5th-6th century CE) deposits from western Hungary, the former territory of Roman Pannonia province. These burials are examples of dogs being interred with other animals as well as humans under various circumstances. The integration of multidisciplinary information in reconstructing both the morphotype and likely socio-cultural status of 13 individuals showed the presence of unusually large dogs in human burials by both late Antique and present-day standards. This raises the question of whether these large dogs were associated with humans or occasions that were seen as particularly significant. Could any large dog be added to the burial of a human considered important enough? The dualistic perceptions of dogs in the historical/ethnographic record offer a broad range of interpretations. The results of high-resolution zoological analysis provided by complete dog skeletons can contribute to a better understanding of dog-human relationships as well as the perception and value of individual dogs to people.

Archaeozoology is the study of animal–human relationships using the evidence of archaeological finds. Throughout the history of civilization human and animal welfare have become inseparable from each other. Microbiota found in and on all multicellular organisms include pathogens linking animals and humans not only to their environments but also to individuals of their own and other species. Animal paleopathology is traditionally based on the attempted identification of macromorphological symptoms of various infections on the excavated skeletal remains of various species. Osteological lesions caused by past animal disease reveal situated relations with humans, as many of them may be resulting from zoonoses shared between multiple species, including people. Interactive socioecological systems giving rise to zoonoses thus involve humans, animals, and pathogens in specific environments. While many such diseases first emerged with the onset of domestication and increasing social complexity, they are also caused by recent human infringements on the natural habitats of wild animals. Understanding animal disease in the distant past is indispensable in developing a long-term, holistic perspective on zoonotic infections. Contextualizing scarce archaeozoological evidence for zoonoses in epidemiological terms should help identifying the factors that promote disease and understanding their dynamics.

The concept of chaîne opératoire has provided a framework for interpreting lithic technologies. How is it being used in archaeozoology? Consuming animals is at the end of a series of tasks that follow a sequence: some steps in carcass processing cannot precede others. This lies at the core of the chaîne opératoire approach. Discrepancies in epistemological and linguistic communication, however, have impeded the adaptation of the chaîne opératoire approach to animal studies, although technological analysis, experimentation, and social anthropology provide excellent tools for the interpretation of animal remains. This paper is a review of similarities and differences between reconstructing production sequences for stone artefacts and animals. It is a summary of the potentials and limitations of using the chaîne opératoire concept on various levels in animal studies.