Abstrakt
The monastery of St. Joseph in Nitra, on Zobor hill, was established by the bishop and castle captain of Nitra at the end of the 17th century at the location of the former Benedictine monastery of St.
Hypolite (9/11th -15th century AD). The hermitage, originally built for 12 monks, came into existence in 1695 or 1697 and represents one of the first five monasteries of the Camaldolese order in the Austrian (Habsburg) monarchy.
It was abolished by a decree of Joseph II in 1728. Several small-scale rescue excavations were carried out at the site.
The most systematic was carried out by the Institute of Archaeology of Slovak Academy of Sciences in 2003 and explored the area of a church and monk dwellings. In two of them, the animal bones were uncovered and processed by drysieving.
Altogether twelve bone samples consisting of 5201 specimens were analysed in 2017. The majority of finds (83%) comes from a small cellar or cesspit in dwelling 9, where bones were deposited together with fine tableware from the final period of the monastery's existence (1760-1782).
This material is dominated by aquatic or semi-aquatic taxa including fish (Pisces), European crayfish (Astacus cf. astacus), and Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra). The most frequent are bones of Northern pike (Esox lucius) and common carp (Cyprinus carpio).
The tench (Tinca tinca), common dace (Leuciscus leuciscus), common bleak (Alburnus alburnus), Wels catfish (Silurus glanis), starry sturgeon (Acipenser stellatus), Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) and the sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus) occurred in smaller quantities. The fish remains are predominated by the large-sized individuals, pointing to the anthropogenic selection of fish, and the wealth of natural resources or favourable artificial fishponds, indicated by several written sources.
The representation of skeletal elements from the head, trunk and fin suggest that complete fish were brought to the site. Monks consumed whole or portions of fish in their dishes (traces of butchery and chewing are recorded).
The assemblage from dwelling no. 9 had an exclusively fasting character, while dwelling no. 3 yielded (beside the fish, beaver or a terrapin), the bones of domestic mammals including young sheep/goat, young cattle, chicken, goose and turkey. The spatial differences are explained through the context of finds, when in the latter they are related with the construction and destruction of the baroque monastery.
The meat of domestic mammals was probably consumed in the monastery by service staff and other secular persons that often visited and used local public services. However, available written records also indicate the relaxation of the diet prescriptions due to the illness or higher age of a monk or the temporal shortage of the fish.