In search of the ‘great horse’:A zooarchaeological assessment of horses from England (AD 300–1650).
The significance of the horse to English social, cultural and economic life in the Middle Ages cannot be overstated. Their importance has seen horses become a research focus for both historians and archaeologists, serving to increase their longstanding popular public appeal. In particular, the warhorse is central to our understanding of medieval English society and culture as both a symbol of status closely associated with the development of aristocratic identity and as a weapon of war famed for its mobility and shock value, changing the face of battle (Clark, 2004; Hyland,1994). Historical records indicate that fortunes were spent on developing and maintaining networks for the breeding, training and keeping of horses used in combat (Ameen et al.,2021; Davis, 1989) further emphasizing the key economic and political roles of these animals. Contemporary written and iconographic sources emphasise the significance of horses within the Norman and later medieval periods, with almost 200 horses appearing throughout the Bayeux Tapestry serving to reinforce the image of the Norman army as one with a significant proportion of cavalry (Davis,1987). To the pioneering French military historian Philippe Contamine, medieval warfare was, quite simply, the ‘age of the horse’, and this long tradition of scholarship is echoed in some modern accounts that continue to stress the primacy of the mounted warrior as the battle-winning weapon par excellence of the Middle Ages (Contamine, 1986).
Yet, even with the immense volume of historical scholarship and contemporary written sources, there is no clear indication of what physical qualities were preferred in the ideal ‘warhorse’. Indeed, it is important to remember that the term ‘warhorse’ covers animals with a whole range of conformations. By the broadest definition, the term encapsulates horses used for a variety of different martial purposes, from the destriers and coursers of the nobility to the rouncies of the mounted archer, though it is most often used as a synonym for the Late Medieval destrier. It is almost certain that different equine characteristics were sought depending upon the intended martial function of the horse. A large destrier intended for display or the tournament required very different physical characteristics compared with the rouncies and trotters needed to cover long distances on the chevauchée(mounted military raiding campaigns). Although it is realistic to assume that the majority of horse bones recovered from archaeological excavations are not from warhorses, there remains a lack of evidence for what types of morphology and conformation to expect from a warhorse, meaning that the positive identification of warhorses has remained elusive from a zooarchaeological perspective.
These issues are exacerbated by the relative paucity of horse bones in medieval assemblages compared with those from the Roman and Iron Age periods across England (Albarella, 2019). The lower relative frequency of horse bones from medieval sites is partially the result of distinctive depositional processes for horses, including the standardised postmortem processing of their carcasses away from domestic sites at tanneries and knackers' yards (MacGregor,2012; Velten, 2013). The analytical approach to the analysis of horse bones is also traditionally different from that applied to other animal remains, focussing on gross size (through estimated withers height), which requires the recovery of complete long bones, rather than a series of metrics from different anatomical planes (Thomas et al., 2018). This has resulted in emphasis on the overall height of horses, rather than allowing for an examination of both size and shape change through time to explore the varied and dynamic roles of horses, including in warfare, during this crucial period of equine history.
Due to this combination of factors, and in spite of the well-known connection between the Later Middle Ages and use of horses in warfare, the medieval warhorse has seen minimal zooarchaeological study, though some work on continental site-specific assemblages has examined this (Hanot et al., 2020; Pluskowski et al., 2009, 2018). This study addresses this gap by compiling and analysing ~2000 individual horse bones dating between the 4th and 17th centuries AD from archaeological sites across England. By undertaking a diachronic review of horse morphology and conformation, we investigate shifts in the trajectories of size and shape related change, with an emphasis on those attributed to the medieval period, to explore how this changing physiology and appearance relates to horses' domestic, elite and military roles.
full article:In search of the ‘great horse’: A zooarchaeological assessment of horses from England (AD 300–1650)