Faunal and taphonomic analyses of a Late Pleistocene bird-bone assemblage from a cave deposit in north-west Hungary

Abstract

The paper presents a faunal and taphonomic discussion of the Late Pleistocene bird-bone assemblages excavated in Kálvária Cave n o 4 near the city of Tatabánya in north-west Hungary. A total of 1150 complete and fragmentary avian remains were recovered from two locations on two separate occasions. Of these, 873 bones could be identified on the species-, family- or order-level. Fifteen of the identified 19 bird taxa could be determined on the species level and they indicate a habitat typical of forest margins. Several species yielded juvenile or subadult specimens, which in view of the breeding period means that these birds died during the summer, most probably between July and September. Each of the two assemblages had distinct characteristics. The high number of kestrel ( Falco tinnunculus) long bones in Assemblage I generally included complete skeletal parts from subadult birds, suggesting a colony which bred in the cave, whose chicks died of natural causes. Even though the bones were exposed to a certain degree of water transport and soil corrosion, they were generally well preserved in the cave sediment. Size-characteristic analyses demonstrated that, in spite of the undeveloped morphological features, the sizes of limb bones usually corresponded to those of adult birds. The greater part of the material in Assemblage II originated from a stratified deposit and was dominated by small and fragmented remains of various taxa. The taxa which could be identified and the taphonomic features of the remains suggest that owl pellets formed the core of this bone assemblage.