Alice Choyke

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Central European University

This chapter covers the existing evidence for horse domestication based on the current archaeological data at the time of publication. Original information on the Botai culture, in north-central Kazakhstan, is an important component of this analysis.

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 sim...

This book investigates relations between humans and animals over several centuries with a focus on the Middle Ages, since important features of our perceptions regarding animals have been rooted in that period. Elucidating various aspects of medieval human-animal relationships requires transdisciplinary discourse, and so this book aims to reconcile...

Details Beads, beadwork, and personal ornaments are made of diverse materials such as shell, bone, stones, minerals, and composite materials. Their exploration from geographical and chronological settings around the world offers a glimpse at some of the cutting edge research within the fast growing field of personal ornaments in humanities’ past....

Ceramics at the Emergence of the Silk Road: A Case from Southeastern Kazakhstan - RETRACTION - Volume 1656 - MaryFran Heinsch, Pamela B. Vandiver, Kyra Lyublyanovics, Alice M. Choyke, Perry Tourtellotte, Claudia Chang

Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-654-7 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-655-4 (epub) A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by...

This multilingual lexicon was created in the framework of the CNRS European research group « Exploitation of osseous materials in Prehistoric Europe » (GDRE PREHISTOS). It was intended as a working tool to catalogue and translate the main terms used for the technical, typological or functional study of hard animal material industries by the GDRE me...

This multilingual lexicon was created in the framework of the CNRS European research group « Exploitation of osseous materials in Prehistoric Europe » (GDRE PREHISTOS). It was intended as a working tool to catalogue and translate the main terms used for the technical, typological or functional study of hard animal material industries by the GDRE me...

This short entry describes some of the osseous artefacts found in Africa, their ages and how these tools contribute to our understanding of the diversity of prehistoric technology in Africa.

Between the fourth century B.C. and second century A.D., changes in climate, culture and commerce converged to extend networks of influence and intensify social stratification in communities situated along the Silk Road. The horse-riding nomads and agro-pastoralists of what is now Southeastern Kazakhstan were important actors in the unfolding of th...

In order to explain variability found in various classes of archaeological find materials there was traditionally a tendency to understand it as a chronological phenomenon connected to independent cultural entities. Most of these so-called archaeological cultures are based on ‘types‘ of ceramic style with less attention paid to classes of artifacts...

To aid methodical gathering of information on how worked osseous materials used in living contexts.

Most of what is known about the Iron Age in Southeastern Kazakhstan has been learned from kurgan burials and historical accounts describing the largely nomadic lifestyle of steppe populations from the 8th century B.C.E. to the 5th century C.E. Recent archaeological surveys however, are revealing an unexpectedly large number of settlements at the ed...

Intensive rescue excavations at the Chalcolithic site of Gyõr-Szabadrét-domb on the Little Hungarian Plain in northern Transdanubia in Hungary revealed among other things, material from a single layer occupation settlement complex covering 4.5 ha with 935 features spanning prehistoric periods from the Middle Neolithic to the Bronze Age as well as s...

Choyke, A.M. 2014. Chapter VII. Worked Skeletal Materials from Paria. In: J. Gyarmati and C. Condarco Castellón, Paria La Viexa, Pre-Hispanic Settlement Patterns in the Paria Basin, Bolivia, and its Inka Provincial Center. Museum of Ethnography:Budapest, 113-118

Hard osseous materials have many special characteristics that made them ideal for manufacturing a variety of tools used in many different activities as well as ornaments. Bone and antler tools in particular are especially good for use on skins, textiles, bark-processing and even ceramic-production. However, efficiency is not the only reason a skeletal...

Choyke, Alice M. 2013. Preface. In: F. de Asís García García, M. Ann Walker Vadillo and M. Victoria Chico Picaza (eds), Animals and Otherness in the Middle Ages; perspectives across disciplines. BAR 2005, Oxford: Archeopress, 7-9.

Neolithic and early Chalcolithic quartered awls have not yet been comprehensively studied as an individual type. Quartered flat-ended, proximally based metapodial awls can be differentiated from other well-made awl types in the same assemblage in terms of their raw material, size, technical style, intensity of use (and possibly type of use wear) and...

Bartosiewicz, L. – Choyke, A. M. 1980. Numerical classification of cattle astragali from Pit 55 at Lovasberény-Mihályvár. Alba Regia XX, Székesfehérvár: 37-42.

Joanna Sofaer, Lise Bender Jørgensen and Alice Choyke, 2013: Craft Production: Ceramics, Textiles and Bone. In: A. Harding and H. Fokkens (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age. Oxford: Oxford University, 469-492.

Choyke, Alice M. 2012: Hunting the Bezoar Goat: Sympathetic Magic in Early Bronze Age Arslantepe. In: D. Raemaekers, K. Esser, R. Lauwerier, J. Zeiler (eds), A Bouquet of Archaeozoological studies. Essays in honour of Wietske Prummel, Groningen Archaeological Studies 21, 11-20, Groningen.

Debris from bone, antler and ivory production from Roman urban settlements takes a number of forms depending on the permanence and type of production. A total of 118 worked and refuse bones were found in a row of north–south running rooms in the insula area of the excavations at San Lorenzo in Lucina, one of the earliest Christian churches in Rome....

Choyke, A. M. 2012. Skeletal elements from animals as raw materials. In: Bone Objects in Aquincum. Az Aquincum Múzeum Gyűjteménye 2. (The Collections of the Aquincum Museum 2), Budapest, 43-53.

Choyke, A.M. 2011. Invited response to R. Farbstein article ‘Technologies of Art: A Critical Reassessment of Pavlovian Art and Society, Using Chaîne Opératoire Method and Theory’, Current Anthropology, June 2011, 431.

L’industrie de l’os retrouvée sur le site Chalcolithique récent de Godedzor est caractérisée par une majorité d’outils simples (ou même parfois occasionnels) et par un petit nombre d’outils bien façonnés, exécutés en plusieurs phases, comme ceux des sites contemporains du Proche-Orient voisin. La plupart des objets sont façonnés à partir de cotes o...

Choyke, A.M. 2011. Sarmation Worked Animal Bones from END0170. A. Vaday, Jankovich D. and Kovács (eds.), Archaeological Investigations in County Békés 1986-1992. Varia Archeologica: Budapest, 307-320.

Sofaer, Joanna, Bech, J.-H., Budden, S., Choyke, A., Eriksen, B. V., Horvath, T., Kovacs, G., Kreiter, A., Muhlenbock, C. and Sticka, H.-P. 2010: Technology and craft. In: Earle, T. and Kristiansen, K. (eds.) Organising Bronze Age Societies. European Society in Late Prehistory: A Comparative Approach. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 185-...

Combs in the late medieval Hungarian images appear as one of the accoutrements of female beauty and vanity. In contrast to this picture of elegance, combs are found in a variety of archaeological settings and curated and worn in various ways although never in very great numbers. The few wooden, bone and ivory combs avail-able from archaeological ex...

Choyke A.M. 2010. Not the Plastic of the Past: The significance of worked osseous materials in archaeology. In J. Gömöri and A. Kőrösi (eds.), Csont és bőr: Az állati eredetű nyersanyagok feldolgozásának története, régészete és néprajza (Bone and Leather: History, Archaeology and Ethnography of Crafts Utilizing Raw Materials from Animals), Magyar T...

In parallel with the more practical aspects of the human-animal relationship revolving around subsistence or draught power, people have always endowed the creatures surrounding them with various human characteristics. For most of the pre- and proto-history of continental Europe there are few written sources to tell us details about the way differen...

Archaeozoologists sitting in the lab and excavating archaeologists struggling to excavate in complex and demanding urban environments often seem to demand data from each other which appears incomprehensible and unreasonable to the other group. Archaeozoologists produce the best and most useful information the more refined and all-inclusive the exca...

Bone objects come to light in a variety of conditions. Sometimes these tools and ornaments are fragmented, sometimes half-finished. Rarely, they are deliberately broken and redistributed. They often display a roughened surface indicating that at one point they lay abandoned or lost on the ground, exposed to weathering. Other times their hard, clear...

Particular types of prehistoric bone tools could be used over the lifetimes of individuals. Such objects would have embodied the memory of both their recent and far-distant constructed past for the groups who traditionally used them. Intensively used tools and ornaments made of osseous materials would have represented the experience and savoir fair...

Choyke, A. M. – Bartosiewicz L. 2009. Telltale tools from a tell: Bone and antler manufacturing at Bronze Age Jászdózsa–Kápolnahalom,Hungary. Tiscium XX: 357–376.

Choyke, A.M. 2009. Cut to fit: comparing Roman Period and medieval bone workshop debris from urban areas (Méretre szabva: a római és középkori városi lelőhelyek csontműveshulladékának összehasonlítása). In: L. Bartosiewicz, E.Gál, I. Kováts eds: Csontvázak a szekrényből Válogatott tanulmányok a Magyar Archaeozoológusok Visegrádi Találkozóinak anyag...

Bartosiewicz, L., Choyke A., Gal E. 2009. Relationships between animals and people in prehistory. In: P. Turk ‒ J. Istenič ‒ T. Knific ‒ T. Nabergoj, The Ljubljanica – a River and its Past, Ljubljana: Narodni Muzej Slovenije, 102-107.

Choyke, A.M. 2008. Bone Technology in Africa. Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Part 2, Springer Netherlands: 406-412

The imitation in bone or antler of objects originally made in other raw materials may have a number of different embedded meanings. Imitation may result from the scarcity or inaccessibility of the original raw material. Imitation may occur within new social contexts. Finally, imitation may serve to retain the social meaning and alter the physical p...

Choyke, A.M. 2008. Csonteszközvizsgálatok a régészben (Bone tool analysis in archaeology). In: E. Jerem, Zs. Mester, F. Cseh (eds.), Oktatónapok Százhalombattán 2, Elöadások a környezetrégészet, az örökségvédelem és az információs technológia régészeti alkalmazása köréből (Teaching days at Százhallombatta 2, Lectures on Environmental Archaeology, C...

The extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius) was a large type of cattle that ranged over almost the whole Eurasian continent. The aurochs is the wild progenitor of modern cattle, but it is unclear whether European aurochs contributed to this process. To provide new insights into the demographic history of aurochs and domestic cattle, we have g...

Choyke, A.M. 2007. Objects for a Lifetime – Tools for a Season: The Worked Osseous Material from Ecsegfalva 23. in: A. Whittle (ed.), The Early Neolithic on the Great Hungarian Plain. Investigations of the Körös Culture Site of Ecsegfalva 23, County Békés. Vol.II, Varia Archaeologica Hungarica XXI, Budapest: Institute of archaeology of the Hungaria...

The rigorous study of bone tools from prehistoric sites has been almost totally neglected in Hungary in spite of the fact that this class of artifact can contribute to our understanding of the social organization and practical aspects of certain craft activities in the past. The choices made by artisans regarding how they make these tools and ornam...

The objects made and used by people are interwoven into people’s memories of the way they have experienced their lives through their individual life histories, the way the world was thought to have been experienced in the past and, finally, the way other people in the world are seen to experience their lives through the use of these objects. The mo...

Choyke, A.M. 2006. The Various Voices of Medieval Animal Bones, Avista Forum Journal (16:1/2), Fall 2006: 59-60.

The prehistory and history of the Carpathian Basin have long been treated as a series of moszly discontinuous cultural events triggered by population movements largely from the East and South of an ambiguous nature. Twenty years of research into the nature of prehistoric bone working in Hungary, which lies at the center of this geographic region, h...

The worked bone, antler and tusk/tooth from Jászdózsa-Kápolnahalom represent one of the most signifi cant assemblages of this class of fi nd from the tell-forming period of the Middle Bronze Age on the Great Hungarian Plain. The site itself, located on the northern section of the plain in an ecotone and not far from the Mátra mountains, represents...

Choyke, A.M. – Lyublyanovics, K. – Bartosiewicz, L. 2005. The Various Voices of Medieval Bones. In: G. Jaritz and A. Choyke (eds.) Animal Diversities. Medium Aevum Quotidianium Volume XVI, Krems: 23-50

The last twelve years in Hungary have seen the steady erosion of old archaeological traditions in research and adaptation to the new realities of dwindling central funding and rescue archaeology. Previous to 1990, somesignificant excavation work related to development went on with the archaeologists negotiating with government agencies. However, th...

Except in situations where a bone projectile point is found embedded in a human body, osseous projectile points tend to be unreliable artifacts for quantifying their relative importance as weapons in conflicts. Owing to their relatively softer raw materials, however, bone and antler points are less frequently found in direct contact or actually pen...

The composition of refuse bone and worked bone assemblages is clearly affected by embedded traditions linked to social identity. This identity can be seen to exist on both a regional and a very local level in the stable period of the Middle Bronze Age in Hungary. Some aspects of the way animals were butchered and bones worked operated on an unconsc...

Schibler, J. – Jacomet, S. – Choyke, A.M. 2004. Arbon-Bleiche 3: a Lake Dwelling on the Lake of Constance. In: Peter Bogucki and Pamela J. Crabtree (eds.), Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World, New York: Schribners' Sons.

Schibler, J. – Jacomet, S. – Choyke, A.M. 2004. Lake Dwellings in the Alpine Region. In: Peter Bogucki and Pamela J. Crabtree (eds.), Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World, New York: Schribners' Sons.

Choyke, A.M. 2003. Animals and Roman Lifeways in Aquincum. In: P. Zsidi (ed.) Forschungen in Aquincum 1969-2002. Aquincum Nostrum II/2: Budapest, 210-232.

Choyke, A.M. 2003. Backward Reflections on Ancient Environments: What Can We Learn From Bone Tools? In: József Laszlovszky and Pétér Szabo (eds.) People and Nature in Historical Perspective. Central European University Department of Medieval Studies and Archaeolingua: Budapest: 139-156.

This study describes how two different branches of investigation, archaeology and zoology/paleontology, dependent on geopolitical and ideological circumstances, have effected the emergence of archaeozoology in Hungary during the 1860s. The second aim was to study, whether the consideration of ideological context by certain scholars may have been th...

Choyke, A. M. 2001. A quantitative approach to the concept of quality in prehistoric bone manufacturing. In H. Buitenhuis–W. Prummel (eds.): Animals and Man in the Past. ARC-Publicatie 41, Groningen, the Netherlands: 59-66.

More than 300 beads made from real and artificial red deer canines were discovered in special burials at the late Neolithic village site of Polgár–Csőszhalom-dűlő 6 in the north of the Great Hungarian Plain. These beads, made into bracelets, belts and necklaces worn by the deceased, were for the most part probably assembled at the time of burial. T...

Choyke A. M. – Bartosiewicz, L. 1999-2000. Bronze Age animal exploitation in the Central Great Hungarian Plain. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 51: 43-70.

Choyke, A. M. 2000. A small neolithic bone chisel from Kompolt-Kistér (Central Hungary). Ősrégészeti Levelek 2/2: 19-22.

Choyke, A. M. 2000. Bronze Age antler and bone manufacturing at Arslantepe (Anatolia). In: Mashkour, M. - Choyke, A. M. - Buitenhuis, H. (eds.), Archaeozoology of the Near East IVA. ARC Publication 32, Groningen: 170-183.

Choyke A.M. 1999. Camelid bone implement from Incarracay, Cochabamba Valley, Bolivia. In J. Gyarmati and A. Varga eds.: The Chacaras of War. An Inka site estate in the Cochabamba Valley, Bolivia. Budapest, Museum of Ethnography: 111-113

Choyke A. M. – Bartosiewicz, L. 1999. Bronze Age animal keeping in Western Hungary. In E. Jerem and I. Poroszlai eds.: Archaeology of the Bronze Age and Iron Age: Experimental archaeology, environmental archaeology, archaeological parks. Archaeolingua Series Major, Budapest: 239-249

The prehistory and history of the Carpathian Basin have long been treated as a series of moszly discontinuous cultural events triggered by population movements largely from the East and South of an ambiguous nature. Twenty years of research into the nature of prehistoric bone working in Hungary, which lies at the center of this geographic region, h...

Choyke, A. M. 2000. Refuse and modified bone from Százhalombatta-Földvár.Some preliminary observations. In: Poroszlai, I. and Vicze, M. (eds.): SAX: Százhalombatta Archaeological Expedition. Annual Report 1 - Field Season 1998. Matrica Museum, Százhalombatta.

Choyke A.M. 1998. The Human - Animal Relationship at Roman Aquincum: An Archaeozoological Perspective. Otium 5-6: 1-22.

Choyke, A. M. 1998. Comments on the osteological identification of Neolithic bone tools from Switzerland. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 50: 233-242.

Choyke, A. M. 1998. Bronze Age red deer: case studies from the Great Hungarian Plain. In P. Anreiter, L. Bartosiewicz, E. Jerem and W. Meid (eds.): Man and the Animal World. Studies in memoriam Sándor Bökönyi. Budapest, Archaeolingua Kiadó: 157-178.

Choyke, A. M. 1997. The bone manufacturing continuum. Anthropozoologica 25-26: 65-72.

Choyke, A. M. 1997. Archaeometry at the Aquincum Museum. In Aquincum: Excavations and Rescue Work at the Aquincum Museum in 1997, Aquincumi füzetek 4. szám Budapest Historical Museum: 13-18.

Choyke, A. 1997. Polgár-Csõszhalom-dûlõ lelõhely csont-, agancs- és agyartárgyainak vizsgálata (Investigations of the bone, antler and tusk objects from the site of Polgár-Csõszhalom-dûlõ). In: Raczky, P., Kovács, T. and Anders, A. (eds.): Utak a Múltba: Az M3-as Autópálya Régészeti Leletmentései (Paths into the Past: Rescue Excavations on the M3 M...

Bartosiewicz, L. – Choyke, A. M. 1997. Osteological analysis of bone tools: a preliminary case study from the Swiss Neolithic. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 49: 227-259.

Choyke, A. M. 1997. The animal bone material from the Ladik Street. Communicationes Archaeologicae Hungariae, Budapest, 1997: 148-152.

Choyke, A. M. 1996. Worked animal bone at the Sarmatian site of Gyoma 133. In S. Bökönyi (ed.): Cultural and Landscape changes in South-East Hungary. Archaeolingua, Budapest: 365-446.

Choyke, A.M. 1994-1995. Animal Bones from the Albertfalva vicus (Excavation years 1990-1991). Communicationes Archaeologicae Hungariae, Budapest: 51-60.

Choyke, A. M. 1995. Worked bone and antler from the Avar Period cemetery at Budakalász - Dunapart. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 47: 221-240

Bartosiewicz, L. – Choyke, A. M. 1995. Die Tierreste aus Iatrus-Krivina (Ausgrabung 1970-1972). In: Iatrus-Krivina, Spätantike Befestigung und frühmittelalterliche Siedlung an der unteren Donau. Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike, Bd. 17. Akademie Verlag, Berlin: 117-121

Choyke A. M. – Bartosiewicz, L. 1994. Angling with bone. In W. Van Neer ed.: Fish exploitation in the past. Koninklijk Museum voor Midden Afrika, Annalen, Zoologische Wetenschappen Vol. 274: 177-182.

Bartosiewicz, L. – Choyke, A. M. 1994. Taxonomie und Typologie der Knochenartefakte von St. Blaise. In: M. Kokabi and J. Wahl (eds.): Beiträge zur Archäozoologie und Prähistorischen Anthropologie. Landesdenkmalamt Baden-Württemberg, Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart: 263-268.

Choyke, A.M. 1993. Animal Bones from the Budapest-Albertfalva vicus 1977 Excavations. Budapest Régiségei XXX, Budapest: 133-135

Bartosiewicz, L. – Choyke, A. M. 1991. Animal remains from the 1970-1972 excavations of Iatrus (Krivina), Bulgaria. Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 43: 181-209.

Choyke, A. M. 1990. Travail de l'os et de l'ivoire á Kerma. In C. Bonnet ed.: Kerma, royaume de Nubie. Mission archéologique de l'Université de Genéve au Soudan, Genéve: 140-141.

Choyke, A. M. 1989. Modified animal bone. In Gabler D. (ed.): The Roman fort of Ács-Vaspuszta (Hungary) on the Danubian limes. Part ii. British Archaeological Reports, British Series 531i, Oxford: 624-632.