László Bartosiewicz

Stockholm University | SU · Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies

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 an...

The articulated skeleton of an adult male lynx was found in association with four dogs and scattered bones of other domesticates in a pit at Zamárdi‐Kútvölgyi‐dűlő II, Hungary. Lynx remains occur rarely in the archaeological record and protocols for ageingan sexing do not exist. Theintact skull of the skeleton offered an opportunity to review the c...

Present-day people from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than people of the Early Bronze Age¹. To understand this, we generated genome-wide data from 793 individuals, increasing data from the Middle to Late Bronze and Iron Age in Britain by 12-fold, and Western and Central Europe by 3.5-fold. Between...

The Archaeolingua Foundation is a particular charitable organisation registered in Budapest, Hungary, in 1991. It was established by Sándor Bökönyi (1926–1994, director of the former Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Wolfgang Meid (professor of linguistics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria), and the “Computer App...

Fourteenth–fifteenth century food refuse from the kitchen of the Esztergom archbishopric shows a significant diachronic increase in cyprinid bones, in particular those of carp. Meanwhile, contributions by large acipenserids and carnivorous species (catfish/wels, pike, percids) declined. Contemporaneous account books indirectly suggest that the arch...

Medieval animal remains from the Esztergom archbishopric (Hungary) were screened using 5 mm and 2 mm mesh sizes, aimed at the high-resolution study of fish and bird remains and helping to achieve better comparisons with documentary sources. This is the first medieval assemblage in Hungary recovered using screening. A total of 7,294 animal remains a...

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disapp...

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disapp...

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disapp...

This article discusses archaeological and historical data on sturgeon (Acipenseridae family) 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 of information offered by prehistoric and medieval fishbone finds and the written record...

Near Eastern Neolithic farmers introduced several species of domestic plants and animals as they dispersed into Europe. Dogs were the only domestic species present in both Europe and the Near East prior to the Neolithic. Here, we assessed whether early Near Eastern dogs possessed a unique mitochondrial lineage that differentiated them from Mesolith...

For decades archaeozoological reconstruction has been aimed at reconstructing animal keeping and herd management strategies from food remains recovered from prehistoric settlements. In spite of the increasing awareness of taphonomic loss and alarming examples of poor representation at documented historic sites, animal remains are still often discus...

This chapter discusses the relationships between intellectual tradition, statutory regulations, and institutional background in Hungarian archaeology between 1948 and 1989. I see the term “communism” as a catch-all term used to describe the 45-year-long Soviet-controlled ideological domination in Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1990. In my view the...

Stable isotope analysis is an essential investigative technique, complementary to more traditional zooarchaeological approaches to elucidating animal keeping practices. Carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope values of 132 domesticates (cattle, caprines and pigs) were evaluated to investigate one aspect of animal keeping, animal forage, at...

mtDNA, isotopic and archaeozoological analyses of cattle teeth and bones from the Late Neolithic site of Links of Noltland, Orkney, Scotland revealed these animals followed similar grazing regimes but displayed diverse genetic origins and included one cattle skull that carried an aurochs (wild cattle) genetic haplotype. Morphometric analyses indica...

The Mesolithic–Early Neolithic radiocarbon record for the Iron Gates is compared against the regional paleoclimatic record. Well‑marked minima in the frequency of radiocarbon dates at ca. 9.5–9.0 ka, 8.65–8.0 ka and after 7.8 ka cal B.P. coincide with “rapid climate change events” recorded in Greenland ice cores and paleoclimate archives from the D...

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Table S2. Measurements of skeletal elements. Table S3. Relative frequencies of skeletal elements. Table S4. Fragmentation of remains

A dogged investigation of domestication The history of how wolves became our pampered pooches of today has remained controversial. Frantz et al. describe high-coverage sequencing of the genome of an Irish dog from the Bronze Age as well as ancient dog mitochondrial DNA sequences. Comparing ancient dogs to a modern worldwide panel of dogs shows an o...

Climente II cave, Iron Gates, Romania was excavated in 1968-9. Human remains were recovered from contexts identified as ‘Clisurean’ (Final Epigravettian), along with ca 6000 chipped stone artifacts, bone tools including awls, arrowheads and a fragment of a harpoon, and shell and animal tooth ornaments. This article presents a re-evaluation of the a...

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations....

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...

Carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) stable isotope analysis of bone collagen from 57 human and 137 faunal samples was conducted with the aim of reconstructing human diet at the Late Chalcolithic (mid-4th millenniumBC) site of Çamlıbel Tarlası, north-central Anatolia. The analyses indicate that the diet of the inhabitants of Çamlıbel Tarlası was based...

Stable isotope ratios of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur in human bone collagen are used routinely to aid in the reconstruction of ancient diets. Isotopic analysis of human remains from sites in the Iron Gates section of the Lower Danube Valley has led to conflicting interpretations of Mesolithic diets in this key region of southeast Europe. One view...

Nehlich and Borić (2015) regard our critique of their original study (Nehlich et al. 2010) as unfair in several respects. In the first place, they maintain that Nehlich et al. (2010) was merely a “pilot study,” and this accounts for the limited data set on which their conclusions were based. The title of the paper, however, describes it as a case s...

The main objective of this paper is to investigate how archaeological fish remains and written historical records can contribute to the reconstruction of long-term developments of fish communities along the Austrian and Hungarian Danube. Although such approaches are sensitive to various factors, the chronological subdivision and relative quantifica...

Camels were not native to Europe during the Holocene and were evidently imported by conquering peoples. The discovery of camel bones at two sites in Slovenia is an important contribution to understanding the distribution and function of these animals during the Roman Imperial Period. Should some Bactrian camels have reached the Roman provinces at a...

It is widely recognised that when marine resources form a significant proportion of the human diet, this results in radiocarbon ages for human remains that are significantly older than the contemporary atmosphere. While there has been widespread assessment of marine ¹⁴C reservoir ages, there has been litle study of the freshwater equival...

This paper is a short comment on the historical perception of camels in Europe with special regard to Ottoman Turkish occupation in the Carpathian Basin. Regardless of their varied functions ranging from tokens of royal selfrepresentation to mundane beasts of burden or war machinery, these animals always stood out as exotica without ever having bee...

An analysis of the summed probability distributions of 293 radiocarbon dates from Late Glacial to mid-Holocene sites in the Danubian Iron Gates highlights the existence of well-marked 14C discontinuities at c. 9.5–9.0 ka, 8.65–8.0 ka and after 7.8 ka cal BP. These coincide with climate anomalies recorded in Greenland ice cores and palaeoclimate arc...

The paper is a short summary of the main archaeological outcomes of an interdisciplinary project in a section of the Drava river crossing the territory of Somogy county, in Hungary. One of the study areas is the vicinity of Berzence where medieval settlement patterns, land use and economy have been reconstructed on the basis of historical sources a...

The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses...

The Bronze Age in Europe has been the subject for some books over the years, including Coles and Harding’s The Bronze Age in Europe and Jacques Briard’s The Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe. This handbook aims to add relevant information about the Bronze Age, and covers Bronze Age Europe outside the Aegean area. It is split into two main parts, which...

Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ∼8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. These pig...

This paper discusses the environmental and cultural implications of non-human vertebrate skeletons from a Copper Age Bodrogkeresztúr culture inhumation burial excavated at Pusztataskony–Ledence I, east-central Hungary. In addition to that of a fully adult brown hare facing the skeleton of a woman laid to rest in a contracted position on her left si...

This paper describes a group of Late Mesolithic burials from Schela Cladovei, excavated in 1991–1992. The remains comprise seven articulated skeletons of primary disposal was extended supine inhumation in simple graves. There is also some evidence for partial burial, including separate disposal of crania, possibly linked to the practice of excarnat...

The first results of carbon and nitrogen (δ13C, δ15N) stable isotope analyses of domestic pig (Sus domesticus Erxl., 1777) remains from three prehistoric sites are presented. Of these, comparison of the datasets from Tell Aqab in Syria and Çamlibel Tarlasi in Turkey suggests different dietary patterns, and possibly different pig husbandry practices...

A peculiar type of injury observed on the second cervical vertebra (epistropheus) of an adult cattle in the animal bone assemblage from the Roman fort at Cramond, Scotland, bears a striking resemblance to similar traumatic lesions previously described in Migration Period sacrificial horses. Transversal metal cut marks observed on the dens epistroph...

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

The An Corran rockshelter, on the north-east coast of the Trotternish peninsula, Skye, contained a series of shell midden and other deposits with evidence for human occupation from Mesolithic and later periods. A rescue investigation of the site in the winter of 1993-94, immediately prior to anticipated total destruction by rock-blasting for roadwo...

The prevalence of adult-type hypolactasia varies ethnically and geographically among populations. A C/T-13910 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) upstream of the lactase gene is known to be associated with lactase non-persistence in Europeans. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of lactase persistent and non-persistent genotypes...

This paper reviews archaeology in Hungary by reflecting upon the relationship between archaeological praxis and theory in different historical settings over the last 140 years. Relations between archaeology and ruling ideologies have had a far greater impact on our discipline than intrinsic theoretical developments. By “relations”, we do not mean t...

Sex-dependent developmental changes in eight cranial measurements were studied using a stepwise discriminant analysis and allometric equations on 99 Scandinavian moose (Alces alces (L.) alces) skulls to define gross sex-related tendencies. While a considerable overlap between sexes is apparent when only univariate statistics are compared, allometri...

In 1975-1981, a very large midden, known as the Kiln Deposit, was excavated at Pantanello. Associated with a Roman period tile factory, the deposit produced a huge quantity of ceramic objects (Fig. 2.1-2), along with coins that date the entire assemblage in successive stages from the Roman Republic period (2nd century bc) to the Early Empire (1st c...

In the Old World, the contribution of paleoethnobotanical and zooarchaeological studies tends to be better appreciated in prehistoric rather than historic archaeology. In the absence of written information, using plant and animal remains in the reconstruction of the natural environment and its culturally idiosyncratic forms of exploitation is of ev...

Composed largely of mollusc shells resulting from food procurement activities, coastal shell middens have been regarded as valuable sources of information about past human exploitation of coastal and marine resources. It is less widely appreciated that these sites, which lie at the interface between the sea and the land, have significant potential...

The study of ancient domestic and wild animals through their remains is essential for understanding the development of animal husbandry and hunting as human occupations in a locale. The remains reveal an important sector of the local economy: the acquisition of animal protein and fat, as well as hides, horns, antlers, sinews, and other raw material...

From 1974 to the present, the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin has carried out archaeological excavations in the ancient territory (chora) of Metaponto, now located in the modern province of Basilicata on the southern coast of Italy. This wide-ranging investigation, which covers a number of sites and a time pe...