The influence and possible negative impact on sinus health of living conditions in rural and urban environments in Viking Age (AD 800–1050) and Early Medieval Sweden (AD 1050–1200) is investigated. Skeletal samples from 32 rural settlements in the Mälaren Valley (AD 750–1200) and burials in the nearby proto-urban port of trade Birka (AD 750–960) are examined. Based on the diagnostic criteria for maxillary sinusitis used in earlier studies, the results show that there is no significant difference in the prevalence of signs of sinusitis between the two materials (i.e. the Mälaren Valley versus Birka). Consequently, this provides no evidence that living in a proto-urban environment had a negative impact on sinus health. However, when compared with previously studied samples from the early medieval town Sigtuna, dated to AD 970–1100, the populations of the Mälaren Valley and Birka show significantly lower frequencies of bone changes interpreted as chronic maxillary sinusitis (95%, 70% and 82% respectively). This implies that the urban environment of Sigtuna could have led to impaired sinus health. There is also a significant difference between males and females in the Birka material, in which more females (100%) than males (68%) were affected. A gender based differentiation in work tasks is suggested by this, or exposure to environmental risk factors that affect sinus health. No difference between males and females could be detected in the samples from the Mälaren Valley and Sigtuna.

During excavations of the Iron Age ringfort of Sandby borg (ad 400–550), the remains of twenty-six unburied bodies were encountered inside and outside the buildings. The skeletons and the archaeological record indicate that after the individuals had died the ringfort was deserted. An osteological investigation and trauma analysis were conducted according to standard anthropological protocols. The osteological analysis identified only men, but individuals of all ages were represented. Eight individuals (31 per cent) showed evidence of perimortem trauma that was sharp, blunt, and penetrating, consistent with interpersonal violence. The location of the bodies and the trauma pattern appear to indicate a massacre rather than a battle. The ‘efficient trauma’ distribution (i.e. minimal but effective violence), the fact that the bodies were not manipulated, combined with the archaeological context, suggest that the perpetrators were numerous and that the assault was carried out effectively. The contemporary sociopolitical situation was seemingly turbulent and the suggested motive behind the massacre was to gain power and control.

The summed probability distribution of 162 radiocarbon dates from Gotland was analysed with reference to archaeological and environmental data in order to evaluate possible variations in settlement intensity on the island. The data indicated variations in demographic development on the island, with probably several different colonization events and external influences; the pioneer settlement reached the island around 9200 cal. BP. After the initial colonization, the radiocarbon dates were rather evenly distributed until around 7700–7600 cal. BP, then there was a drop in the number of dates between 8300 and 8000 cal. BP that may be associated with the 8200 cold event. A marked decline in the number of dates between 7600 and 6000 cal. BP may be associated initially with the Littorina I transgression, but this transgression cannot explain why the Late Mesolithic period is not well represented on Gotland: the climatic development was favourable but did not result in increased human activity. The number of radiocarbon dates indicated that the population size remained low until around 6000 cal. BP, after which there was a gradual increase that reached a first ‘threshold’ after 5600 cal. BP and a second ‘threshold’ after 4500 cal. BP. The first apparent population increase was associated with the appearance of the Funnel Beaker Culture (FBC) and the second with Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) complexes. A decline in the number of dates occurred after 4300 cal. BP, i.e. towards the Late Neolithic. There was an association between the frequency distributions of the radiocarbon dates and the number of stray finds from different time periods but any correlation was not straightforward.

The evolutionary relevance of neoteny, the concept that adults displaying youthful proportions evoke caregiving instincts, has frequently been questioned. The biological roots of the problem lead to the expression of age, sex and inheritance in size and shape. Formalist interpretations, however, can be misleading as the idea itself is anthropocentric. This weakness (in natural science) makes historic reflections on neoteny more interesting in material culture shaped by humans themselves. Archaeozoological examples include animal breeds, especially dogs. The attraction to "youthful" proportions also seems to have been exploited in both the creative and applied arts. Researchers of this eminently interdisciplinary subject cannot ignore overarching questions regarding complex and mutual interactions between nature and culture.

Ideas of nation and nationhood in the modern world are the product of a number of forces, currents, and trends, whether political, economic, social, intellectual, cultural, or natural. Often overlooked as an influence shaping national identities are animals. This chapter argues that the formation of national identities and modern breeds were intertwined and mutually dependent processes and that sharing territory was fundamental for both. Live domestic animals are bona fide artefacts of human culture as they have been, both consciously and unconsciously, shaped by people not simply to meet material needs but also to express tastes, aspirations, and various forms of social identity. The chapter also examines three different theories that have been offered to account for the origins of the Hungarian Grey. Breed and nation are analogous modern concepts applied anachronistically, yet human and animal identities influenced one another while these categories were emerging and long before they became more or less fixed in their modern meanings.

Domestication is known to have increased animal morbidity. Wild animals, however, should not be looked upon romantically like Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “noble sauvage”, untainted by civilisation. Rare pathological lesions found on the bones of wild animals in archaeozoological assemblages, they offer valuable information both from a zoological and a archaeological point of view. In addition to discussing problems of sampling, this paper is a review of major factors such as taphonomy, environment, and heritability that determine the manifestation of disease in wild animals in archaeological assemblages. A simple classification, specifically developed for wild animals, is presented that helps better understand these conditions. Numerous examples from both the author’s own work and the broad base of international literature (especially on Europe and the Southwest Asia) are cited to help illustrate how disease is manifested on the bones of wild animals recovered from a variety of archaeological periods. The results of this paper show that although domestication undoubtedly brought about an increase in animal morbidity, depending on the chances of survival of a game species and the functional importance of the body part affected, a variety of pathological lesions regularly occur on the remains of wild animals as well.

Turkey is the last important domestic animal to have been introduced to Europe. It reached the Carpathian Basin at a historically critical time when this area was divided between the Catholic Hungarian Kingdom allied with Austria, the Ottoman Turkish Empire and Protestant Transylvania, a Turkish protectorate. This politically complex situation was also reflected in trade connections. Potential import routes therefore are unclear. Introduction from western/central European countries is consonant with the spread of turkeys in the European continent, but contacts between the Ottoman Turkish and Spanish trade networks may also be reckoned with. Two of the five sites that yielded turkey bones in Hungary fell outside Ottoman Turkish occupation. One originates from an urban context that only temporarily fell under Turkish rule. All turkey remains found at these settlements can be associated with elite consumption. Their anatomical distribution is dominated by meat-rich skeletal elements. This paper is also a review of literary and linguistic evidence regarding the occurrence of turkeys in the territory of present-day Hungary.

The Carpathian Basin, situated between the Alps, the Carpathians, and the Dinaric Alps, has been a geographically and culturally diverse area throughout its history. Research intensity in all periods and places is likewise heterogeneous. A complete review of animal–human relationships is, thus, impossible. Following a historical overview of research, characteristic examples of animal exploitation between the Neolithic and the early eighteenth century will be highlighted. Special emphasis is placed on the way migrations and imperial politics impacted the composition of animal bone assemblages. The role of animals in self-representation and other forms of symbolic communication are also considered.

During the last few years there has been an upswing in interest in animal stud-ies among medievalists. Historical research into medieval animal husbandry and the use of related products has intensified in terms of the analysis of docu-mentary (and to some extent, iconographic) sources, but the help of archae-ologists has also been enlisted. Eventually, the study of animal bone finds also began, although this type of inquiry is far better developed in the field of pre-historic archaeology: in the absence of written sources, prehistorians had to turn to less spectacular evidence, including animal remains. Archaeozoology is devoted to the identification, analysis and interpretation of animal remains from archaeological sites. Although the detailed analysis of written sources and animal iconography fall outside the scope of archaeozoology, familiarity with this process is indispensable for properly interpreting the archaeological traces of medieval animal exploitation.

Animals have always been important to humans, both in their materiality and in their variegated symbolic roles. This volume offers a review of some medieval attitudes toward animals between the wake of Late Antiquity and the emergence of the Renaissance through integrated research on written sources, animal bone finds, and iconographic data. By simply reading and discussing each other’s work, medievalists and zoologists from very different intellectual backgrounds can expose new aspects of the way people perceived, treated, and used animals in the Middle Ages. The nature of the resulting complex and tangled interpretations is dependent on shifting definitions of what a particular animal means to both present-day researchers and in the minds of people from different social and geographical backgrounds in the Middle Ages.

This article discusses archaeological and historical data on sturgeon (Acipenseridaefamily) in the Danube River with special emphasis on the great sturgeon (Acipenser huso Linnaeus,1758 syn. Huso huso Brandt, 1869). Having established the complementary nature ofinformation offered by prehistoric and medieval fish bone finds and the written record, it emphasizesthat a multidisciplinary interpretive framework is indispensable in addressing ecologicaland economic questions involving traditional sturgeon exploitation, extinction and possiblereintroduction in the Danube. Prior to their extinction in the Danube, sturgeons were affectedby the sum of anthropogenic activities along the river’ s course, including increasing watertransport, overfishing and the construction of dams. 

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.

Bronze Age animal exploitation was very diverse in Europe due to broad chronological boundaries and extensive adaptations to local geographical and socioeconomic environments. Demographic changes and the emergence of settlements with high concentrations of increasingly stratified human populations stimulated the diversification of animal-related resources beyond mundane meat consumption. This is directly reflected in ordinary food refuse brought to light at settlement excavations. Subsistence hunting had lost its significance compared with the preceding Neolithic, while domestic animals gained in importance not only as a source of meat: the use of renewable, ‘secondary’ animal products also became widespread. Innovations such as dairying, wool production and using cattle for draught had already developed earlier. However, the roles of these resources in local economies stabilised during the Bronze Age. Quantitative comparisons between animal remains and macrobotanical finds are made difficult by taphonomic and methodological differences. Reconstructions of mobility, as reflected in archaeozoological assemblages, may be profitably compared with occurrences of millet, a special crop of short growing season and also a C4 plant, detectable by means of stable isotope analysis in both human and animal diets.

The unexpected recovery of a worked skull fragment from a large male leopard at the medieval urban site of Segesd–Pékóföld during the 1980s raises important questions. These concern zoogeographical distribution, as well as issues of manufacturing, status, and the circulation of luxury goods. In recent years these aspects of the special artefact could be revisited on the basis of an increasing body of data and new insights into the symbolic use of this artefact in high-status self-representation.

A small assemblage (NISP=3,217) of 5th millennium BC Halaf and subsequent Ubaid Period animal bones and molluscan remains was recovered during the 1975 and 1976 field seasons at the site of Tell Aqab (Jezirah province, northeastern Syria) some 100 km west of the Tigris River forming the current border between Turkey and Syria. The ca. 9.5 m high mound is located alongside a small seasonal stream that forms part of the Wadi Dara drainage system. Excavations were carried out by a University of Edinburgh team following a survey in the Khabur River floodplain. The purpose of excavations at the time was to clarify regional patterning in ceramic assemblages during the periods for which Tell Aqab had well-stratified layers, especially the Middle Halaf Period.

Unsurprisingly, the poorly preserved faunal material was dominated by the bone fragments of small ruminants, evidently sheep and goat. Remains of cattle and pigs were also recovered. Hunting was indicated by the sporadically occurring remains of wild ass and gazelle, possibly also contributing to the heavily fragmented small ruminant remains. High fragmentation precluded the detailed metric analysis of bones. Meanwhile, in addition to the number of identifiable specimens (NISP) individual bone weights were taken in an effort to better appraise the dietary contributions of the species identified. Adding faunal information to this archaeological work contributes yet another data point to the map of prehistoric animal exploitation in the Fertile Crescent.

Az Archaeolingua Alapítvány 1991-ben Budapesten bejegyzett kiemelten közhasznú szervezet, melyet Bökönyi Sándor akadémikus (1926–1994, az egykori MTA Régészeti Intézetének igazgatója), Wolfgang Meid (azInnsbrucki Egyetem nyelvészeti intézetének professor emeritusa) és az MTA Régészeti Intézetének „Számítástechnika alkalmazása a régészetben” nevű kutatócsoportja hozott létre (utóbbit Jerem Erzsébet és RedőFerenc képviselte). Ez a cikk az Alapítvány első harminc évének rövid áttekintése, különös tekintettel apublikációs eredményekre, amelyek a sokrétű kulturális tevékenység megbízható, objektív mércéjének bizonyultak. Nem célja, hogy összefoglalja az Alapítvány történetét; elsősorban inkább azzal foglalkozik – egyszereplő tapasztalatainak tükrében – mi történt az eredeti célkitűzésekkel a tudományos kutatás és könyvkiadás ezen területén. A visszatekintés ugyanakkor arra is alkalmat ad, hogy megfogalmazzuk a tudományoskönyvkiadás és publikációk sokféle formájának mai lehetőségeit és kihívásait.