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The Warwick Shaffron, held in the collections of the Royal Armouries (VI.446) is the earliest extant example of a European medieval shaffron on public display anywhere in the world. In addition to its early date, the shaffron is also considered exceptional because of its seemingly formidable size, coupled with apparent physical evidence of battle damage. This study sheds new light on the Warwick Shaffron through the application of an original measurement methodology developed through the AHRC-funded 'Warhorse Project' and applied to shaffrons in the collections of the Royal Armouries. Drawing upon the Warhorse Project's wider findings on medieval horse stature, this paper critically discusses what shaffrons can tell us about the size of the mounts that wore them. A headline finding is that the dimensions of the Warwick Shaffron are entirely compatible with what we know about the size range of medieval horses at the time of its manufacture, albeit towards the upper end of the range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the role of horses as expressed in assemblages from settlement sites and cemeteries between the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age in Kazakhstan. In this land, known for its rich association with horses, the skeletal evidence appears to indicate a fading of ritual interest. But that's not the whole story, and once again micro-archaeology reveals the true balance. The horses are present at the funeral, but now as meat for the pot, detected in bone fragments and lipids in the pot walls. Keywords: Kazakhstan, Eneolithic, Bronze Age, Andronovo, horse, burial rites, faunal remains, lipids, Introduction From the Palaeolithic onwards, the archaeology and cultures of Kazakhstan were heavily influenced by people's changing relationships with one particular animal species, the horse. Horses shift from being a [...]

Direct and accurate radiocarbon dating of lipid residues preserved in ceramics is a recently established method that allows direct dating of specific food products and their inception in human subsistence strategies. The method targets individual fatty acids originating from animal fats such as ruminant dairy, ruminant adipose, non-ruminant adipose and aquatic fats. Horse lipid residues found in Central Asian pottery vessels are also directly dateable using this new method. Here we present the identification of equine lipid residues preserved in two pottery assemblages from the Neolithic and Eneolithic in Kazakhstan and their direct 14C dating. The site of Botai, previously radiocarbon-dated to the 4th millennium BC, was used as a reference to evaluate the dates obtained directly on horse lipids. The direct dating of equine products extracted from Botai potsherds are shown to be compatible with previous 14C dates at the site. The site of Bestamak, lacking previous14C measurements, had been relatively dated to the Neolithic based on pottery typologies. The direct dating of equine residues made it possible to anchor the pottery assemblage of Bestamak in the 6th millennium BC confirming their Neolithic attribution. These findings demonstrate the potential for dating horse products through a compound-specific approach, while highlighting challenges in 14C dating individual fatty acids from lipid extracts in which their abundances differ substantially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Horses have had a singular impact on human societies. Beyond increasing interconnectivity and revolutionizing warfare, reconfigurations of human-horse relationships coincide with changes in sociopolitical formations. How this occurs is less well understood. This article proposes that relationships of equestrianism transform people and horses reciprocally, generating new possibilities for both species. Focusing here on human benefits, equestrianism affords differential and increased mobility, access, and experience for people, which translate horse power into human power. This has particular consequences for how political authority is negotiated. I use the tell societies of Bronze Age Hungary (ca. 2300/2200–1600/1500 BC) to model how horses were harnessed in resistance to centralized rule and social inequality as much as they were used to assert power. This interpretation challenges traditional grand narratives for the European Bronze Age, which see male elite warriors driving chariots, desirous of bronze, and instituting hierarchical, complex societies. Rather, ordinary women and men riding horses built these long-lived communities and were variously able to resist chiefly authority because of the power offered by horses. The theory starts disentangling mechanisms between local equestrianism and long-term historical changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Megafauna paintings have accompanied the earliest archaeological contexts across the continents, revealing a fundamental inter-relationship between early humans and megafauna during the global human expansion as unfamiliar landscapes were humanized and identities built into new territories. However, the identification of extinct megafauna from rock art is controversial. Here, we examine potential megafauna depictions in the rock art of Serranía de la Lindosa, Colombian Amazon, that includes a giant sloth, a gomphothere, a camelid, horses and three-toed ungulates with trunks. We argue that they are Ice Age rock art based on the (i) naturalistic appearance and diagnostic morphological features of the animal images, (ii) late Pleistocene archaeological dates from La Lindosa confirming the contemporaneity of humans and megafauna, (iii) recovery of ochre pigments in late Pleistocene archaeological strata, (iv) the presence of most megafauna identified in the region during the late Pleistocene as attested by archaeological and palaeontological records, and (v) widespread depiction of extinct megafauna in rock art across the Americas. Our findings contribute to the emerging picture of considerable geographical and stylistic variation of geometric and figurative rock art from early human occupations across South America. Lastly, we discuss the implications of our findings for understanding the early human history of tropical South America. This article is part of the theme issue 'Tropical forests in the deep human past'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Popular culture presents a deep‐rooted perception of medieval warhorses as massive and powerful mounts, but medieval textual and iconographic evidence remains highly debated. Furthermore, identifying warhorses in the zooarchaeological record is challenging due to both a paucity of horse remains relative to other domesticates, and the tendency of researchers to focus on osteological size, which makes it difficult to reconstruct in‐life usage of horses and activity related changes. This paper presents the largest zooarchaeological dataset of English horse bones (n = 1964) from 171 unique archaeological sites dating between AD 300 and 1650. Using this dataset alongside a modern comparative sample of known equids (n = 490), we examine trends in size and shape to explore how the skeletal conformation of horses changed through time and reflected their domestic, elite and military roles. In addition to evidencing the generally small stature of medieval horses relative to both earlier and later periods, we demonstrate the importance of accurately exploring the shape of skeletal elements to describe the morphological characteristics of domestic animals. Furthermore, we highlight the need to examine shape variation in the context of entheseal changes and biomechanics to address questions of functional morphology and detect possible markers of artificial selection on past horses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2008.423_8.x Byline: ALAN K. OUTRAM (1) Author Affiliation: (1)University of Exeter

Physical evidence of weapon trauma in medieval burials is unusual, and evidence for trauma caused by arrowheads is exceptionally rare. Where high frequencies of traumatic injuries have been identified, this is mainly in contexts related to battles; it is much less common in normative burials. Osteological analysis of one context from an assemblage of disarticulated and commingled human bones recovered from a cemetery associated with the thirteenth-century Dominican friary in Exeter, Devon, shows several instances of weapon trauma, including multiple injuries caused by projectile points. Arrow trauma is notoriously difficult to identify, but this assemblage shows that arrows fired from longbows could result in entry and exit wounds in the skull not incomparable to modern gunshot wounds. Microscopic examination of the fracture patterns and spalling associated with these puncture wounds provides tentative evidence that medieval arrows were fletched to spin clockwise. These results have profound implications for our understanding of the power of the medieval longbow, for how we recognise arrow trauma in the archaeological record and for our knowledge of how common violent death and injury were in the medieval past, and how and where casualties were buried. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MARSHA LEVINE, COLIN RENFREW & KATIE BOYLE (ed.). Prehistoric steppe adaptation and the horse (McDonald Institute Monograph). xii+428 pages, 192 figures, 40 tables. 2003. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research; [...]

Recent excavations at the Mitchell Prehistoric Indian Village, an Initial Middle Missouri site in Mitchell, South Dakota have revealed a large, clay-lined feature filled with fractured and fragmented bison bones. Fracture and fragmentation analysis, along with taphonomic evidence, suggests that the bones preserved within the feature represent evidence of prehistoric bone marrow and bone grease exploitation. Further, the character of the feature suggests that it served as a bone grease processing station. Bone fat exploitation is an activity that is frequently cited as a causal explanation for the nature of many fractured and fragmented bone assemblages in prehistory, and zooarchaeological assemblages have frequently been studied as evidence of bone fat exploitation. The Mitchell example provides some of the first direct, in-situ archaeological evidence of a bone grease processing feature, and this interpretation is sustained by substantial analytical evidence suggesting bone fat exploitation. This new evidence provides a clearer concept of the nature of bone fat exploitation in prehistory as well as an indication of the scale and degree to which bone grease exploitation occurred at the Mitchell site. Finally, this research demonstrates the importance of careful zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis for the interpretation of both artifactual remains as well as archaeological features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a high-resolution isotopic study of medieval horse mobility, revealing their origins and in-life mobility both regionally and internationally. The animals were found in an unusual horse cemetery site found within the City of Westminster, London, England. Enamel strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope analysis of 15 individuals provides information about likely place of birth, diet, and mobility during the first approximately 5 years of life. Results show that at least seven horses originated outside of Britain in relatively cold climates, potentially in Scandinavia or the Western Alps. Ancient DNA sexing data indicate no consistent sex-specific mobility patterning, although three of the five females came from exceptionally highly radiogenic regions. Another female with low mobility is suggested to be a sedentary broodmare. Our results provide direct and unprecedented evidence for a variety of horse movement and trading practices in the Middle Ages and highlight the importance of international trade in securing high-quality horses for medieval London elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]