Fifty shades of grey? The impact of the Hungarian cattle trade on cattle breeding in the late medieval and early modern period

In this paper, the authors present a concise overview of the results of historical and archaeological research on the Hungarian cattle trade in the late medieval and early modern periods. The first part of the discussion focuses on historical data, highlighting spatial aspects of trade (rearing zones/areas, major routes) in order to contextualize the results of archaeozoological examinations presented in the second part, which, in turn, is based on a geometric morphometrical analysis of cattle metapodials from different sites. The underlying hypothesis is that spatio-temporal patterns revealed by the archaeozoological analysis (connections among assemblages from different sites) are the impact of large-scale cattle trade. The authors also propose that historical interpretations, informed by fragmentary data and indirect evidence, are biased when arguing for the explicit or dominant role of the Hungarian Grey Cattle (henceforth HGC) in export trade. Such views should be revised in the light of both the historical and archaeological evidence. The data presented in this paper substantiate the claim that there were diverse local breeds in the Great Hungarian Plain (henceforth GHP).