INTRODUCTION. 343
bones, chiefly the distal and proximal ends are found, and the shaft is broken in many pieces, which it is rarely possible to put together to complete the bone; so that it would seem that the bones were for the most part broken with a dull instrument. Only in culture periods I b and II do we find more frequent traces of scraping and cutting done with sharp instruments. In connection with the cranial pieces it is to be mentioned that all skulls were split through the middle. What I just said also applies here. In culture I b for the first time, and in period II, we find a sharp cut through the skulls of horses and of sheep: Skulls of period la and the beginning of period I b were probably all broken with dull instruments; and for this reason we do not find any linear fractures, but merely jagged breaks, which in young animals follow the sutures.
Lastly, as regards the age of the animals of which we have the bones, it is to be noticed that really old animals do not occur, with the exception of some horses, an ox, and some pigs, sheep, and gazelles. The remaining animals are for the greater part adult, except that among the sheep and pigs there is a great quantity of bones of very young animals—small porklings and lambs. This is confirmed by the abundant occurrence of milk teeth and epiphyses of the extremity bones. It is particularly important to observe that more than 95 per cent of the bones of very young animals belong to uppermost layers of the period I b and period II ; from which it would seem proper to draw the conclusion that this consumption of young animals indicates herds of considerable size. The contrast to the pile-dwellers of Europe and the Germans of Schlossberg is very evident, since among these Europeans the appearance of young animals on the table was relatively rare.
The investigation of these bones lasted from the autumn of 1904 to the spring of 1907, and was carried on according to the methods applied in former researches. For their comparison with recent bones I have used my own collection, as well as those of the museums in Bern, Vienna, London, and Berlin. Besides this, my friend, M. Paul Gervais, in Paris, very kindly made for me any necessary measurements on the skeletons in the collection of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. For comparison with subfossil bones I have, in addition to the results of my own previous investigations and the measurements given in the literature on the subject, the collection of the Museum Society in Teplitz, including bones from fifty localities in Bohemia, sent to me at the same time for determination and labeling.
It only remains for nie to express publicly to Prof. Raphael Pumpelly my warmest thanks for the pleasure he has given me by intrusting to me the study of the bones from such an extremely interesting locality, as well as for the kindness with which he assumed the tedious task of correcting and translating this report, which I had written partly in English and partly in German.
I am also indebted to the directors and managers of the museums I have named, and especially to Professor Studer, director of the Museum für Naturkunde at Bern, for assistance in preparing this memoir.
IIIF Color HighRes
