Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-rkxrd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T20:08:18.505Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Animal Husbandry and Agricultural Improvement: The Archaeological Evidence from Animal Bones and Teeth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

Simon J. M. Davis  and
John V. Beckett
Simon J. M. Davis
Affiliation:
Ancient Monuments Laboratory, English Heritage, London, UK.
John V. Beckett
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Agricultural historians have long been aware that a major increase in productivity and output characterised the so-called ‘agricultural revolution’. Usually, however, this has been measured by indirect means: the fact, for example, that English farmers were able to feed some 3 million more people in 1700 than in 1540, and almost 20 million more in 1880 than in 1750. Since mouths were fed without recourse to massive imports -which would have had significant economic implications for the industrial revolution -and since these increases in output were achieved while the agricultural labour force was in steep relative decline, the obvious implication is that productivity was increasing. Measuring such changes has proved complex, partly because data were not collected in a systematic fashion prior to the 1870s, and partly because such evidence as we have relating to prices and rents hardly represents an adequate proxy for productivity. In general terms, the best material has been for the grain acreage, particularly for wheat and barley.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Kerridge, Eric, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Thirsk, Joan, England's Agricultural Regions and Agrarian History, 1500–1750 (London, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beckett, J. V., The Agricultural Revolution (Oxford, 1990).Google Scholar

2. Thirsk, J. (ed), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume IV, 1500–1640 (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar; Volume V (Cambridge, 1984–5); Mingay, G. E. (ed), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume VI, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar

3. Overton, M., Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Campbell, B. M. S. and Overton, M., ‘A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming, c.1250–c. 1850’, Past and Present, 141 (1993).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Campbell, and Overton, , ‘New Perspective’, pp. 74, 83, 88.Google ScholarHowever Allen, R. C. has argued that late early-modern yields were a good deal higher than medieval levels.Google Scholar

6. Campbell, and Overton, , ‘New Perspective’.Google Scholar

7. Overton, , Agricultural Revolution, p. 115.Google Scholar

8. Fussell, G. E., ‘The Size of English Cattle in the Eighteenth Century’, Agricultural History, 3, 1929, 160–81.Google Scholar

9. Fussell, G. E., ‘Animal Husbandry in Eighteenth Century England, Part 1’, Agricultural History, (04 1937), 96–116Google Scholar; ‘Part 2’, ibid, (July 1937), 189–214.

10. Fussell, , ‘Animal Husbandry Part 1’, p. 96.Google Scholar

11. ibid, p. 97

12. Russell, N., Like Engend'ring Like: Heredity and Animal Breeding in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986).Google Scholar

13. Smith, R. Trow, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (London, 1957)Google Scholar; A History of British Livestock Husbandry, 1700–1900 (London, 1959); Jones, E. L., The Development of English Agriculture 1815–1873 (London, 1968).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Mingay, , Agrarian History, pp. 313–51.Google Scholar

15. ibid, pp. 313–51, 973 passim.

16. Armitage, Philip L., ‘A Preliminary Description of British Cattle from the Late Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century’, The Ark, 7 (1980), 405–13.Google Scholar

17. Albarella, Umberto and Davis, Simon J. M., ‘Mammals and Birds from Launceston Castle, Cornwall: Decline in Status and the Rise of Agriculture’, Circaea, 12, 1996, 1–156.Google Scholar

18. Kerridge, , The Agricultural RevolutionGoogle Scholar; Thirsk, , England's Agricultural Regions and Agrarian History, 1500–1750.Google Scholar

19. Davis, Simon J. M., Saxon and Medieval Animal Bones from Bury stead and Langham Road, Northants; 1984–1987 Excavations, HBMC AM Laboratory report 71/92, 1992Google Scholar; Albarella, Umberto, Beech, Mark and Mulville, Jacqui, The Saxon, Medieval and Post-Medieval Mammal and Bird Bones Excavated 1989–1991 from Castle Mall, Norwich (Norfolk), (1997 HBMC AM Laboratory report 72/97).Google Scholar

20. Hallam, H. E. (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, volume II, 1042–1350 (Cambridge, 1986)Google Scholar; Miller, E. (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, volume III, 1348–1500 (Cambridge, 1991).Google Scholar

21. Connell, Brian, Davis, Simon and Locker, Alison, The Post-Medieval Animal Bones from Camber Castle, East Sussex, excavated 1963–1983 (HBMC AM Laboratory report 107/97, 1997)Google Scholar

22. Carew, R., The Survey of Cornwall, 1602, pp. 23–4.Google Scholar

23. Defoe, D., A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain [1724] (London, 1962)Google Scholar; Davis, Thomas, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Wiltshire (London, 1794).Google Scholar

24. Albarella, and Davis, , ‘Launceston Castle’Google Scholar measured over three and a half thousand bones and teeth. Statistical tests revealed a significant difference in the average size of cattle teeth and bones and sheep bones between the mid-late fifteenth century and the sixteenth-seventeenth century at Launceston.

25. Davis, Simon J. M., Faunal Remains from Closegate I & II, Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, 1988 & 1990 excavations HBMC AM Laboratory report 81/91, 1991Google Scholar; Fraser, Richard, Jamfrey, Caroline and Vaughan, John, ‘Excavation on the site of the Mansion House, Newcastle, 1990’, Archaeologia Aeliana, fifth series, 23, 1995.Google Scholar

26. Davis, Simon J. M., Prudhoe Castle, A Report on the Animal Remains, HBMC AM Laboratory report 162/87, 1987.Google Scholar

27. Albarella, Umberto, Beech, Mark and Mulville, Jacqui, Norwich (1997).Google Scholar

28. Dobney, Keith, Jaques, Deborah and Irving, Brian, Of Butchers and Breeds: The Vertebrate Remains from Excavations in the City of Lincoln (1972–1989) (Lincoln, 1996) Lincoln Archaeological Trust.Google Scholar

29. Maltby, Mark, The Animal Bones from Exeter 1971–1975, Exeter Archaeological reports, 2 (Sheffield University, Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, 1979).Google Scholar

30. Holmes, Jonathan M., ‘Report on the Animal Bones from the Resonance Chambers of the Whitefriars Church, Coventry’Google Scholar, in Woodfield, C., ‘Finds from the Free Grammar School at the Whitefriars, Coventry, c.l 545- c.l 557/58’, Post-Medieval Archaeology 15 (1981), 81–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. Stallibrass, Sue, ‘The Animal Bones’Google Scholar, in Scull, C., ‘Excavations in the Cloister of St. Frideswide's Priory, 1985’, Oxoniensia 53 (1988), 56–60.Google Scholar

32. Albarella, and Davis, , ‘Launceston Castle’.Google Scholar See also Albarella, Umberto, ‘Shape Variation of Cattle Metapodials: Age, Sex or Breed? Some Examples from Medieval and Post-Medieval Sites’. Anthropozoologica 25–26 (1997) 37–47.Google Scholar

33. Degerbøl, Magnus, ‘Prehistoric Cattle in Denmark and Adjacent Areas’, in Mourant, A. E. and Zeuner, F. E. (eds), Man and Cattle: Proceedings of a Symposium on Domestication at the Royal Anthropological Institute 24–26 May 1960 (1963), 69–79 (Occasional Paper no. 18 of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London).Google Scholar

34. Hatting, Tøve, ‘Osteological Investigations on Ovis aries L’, Dansk Naturhistorisk Førening 144 (1983), 115–35.Google Scholar

35. Davis, Simon J. M., ‘The Effect of Castration on the Development of the Shetland Sheep Skeleton and a Biometric Comparison Between Males, Females and Castrates’ (in preparation).Google Scholar

36. Markham, Gervase, The English Hovse-Wife, containing the inward and outward vertues which ought to be in a compleate woman (1637), p. 190.Google Scholar

37. Albarella, and Davis, , ‘Launceston Castle’.Google Scholar

38. Grant, Annie, ‘Animal Resources’, in Astill, G. and Grant, A. (eds), The Countryside of Medieval England (Oxford, 1988) pp. 149–261, especially p. 156.Google Scholar

39. Trow-Smith, , History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700.Google Scholar

40. Maltby, , ExeterGoogle Scholar

41. Griffith, N. J. L., Halstead, P. L. J., MacLean, A. and Rowley-Conwy, P. A., ‘Faunal Remains and Economy’ in Mayes, P. and Butler, L. A. S., Sandal Castle Excavations 1964–1973 (Wakefield, 1983), pp. 341–8.Google Scholar

42. O'Connor, Terry P., ‘Bone Assemblages from Monastic Sites: Many Questions but few Data’, in Gilchrist, R. and Mytum, H. (eds), Advances in Monastic Archaeology, (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar BAR British series 227, p. 109; Dobney, et al. , LincolnGoogle Scholar; Albarella, et al. NorwichGoogle Scholar; Connell, , Davis, and Locker, , ‘Camber’Google Scholar; Albarella, and Davis, , ‘Launceston Castle’.Google Scholar

43. Kerridge, , Agricultural RevolutionGoogle Scholar; Dyer, Christopher, Warwickshire Farming 1349- c.1520: Preparations for the Agricultural Revolution (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar Dugdale Society Occasional papers no. 27; Campbell, Bruce M. S. and Overton, Mark, ‘Norfolk Livestock Farming 1250–1740: A Comparative Study of Manorial Accounts and Probate Inventories’, Journal of Historical Geography, 18 (1992), 377–96.Google Scholar

44. Overton, Agricultural Revolution, p. 115.

45. Turner, M. E., Beckett, J. V. and Afton, B., ‘Taking Stock: Farmers, Farm Records and Agricultural Output in England, 1700–1850’, Agricultural History Review, 44 (1996), 21–34.Google Scholar