Dominion: People, Animals and Environments in Medieval Europe



"Omnis mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum; nostrae vitae, nostrae mortis, nostri status, nostrae sortis fidele signaculum."	"All the world's creatures, as a book and a picture, are to us as a mirror; our life, our death, our present condition, our passing are faithfully signified."
(Alain de Lille, 1128-1202)

I (Aleks Pluskowski) began this research in October 2003, funded by Clare College, Cambridge and affiliated to the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. The aim is to explore the diversity of human responses to animals and their environment across medieval Europe, focusing on England and France but extending to Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, central and eastern Europe. Once completed, this project will provide an interdisciplinary overview punctuated with comparative case studies exploring topics such as:

Patterns in the exploitation of fauna by different social groups (e.g. seigneurial) in varying environmental contexts.

Ecological and conceptual roles of predators and prey.

Wildlife value systems.

Conceptualised boundaries between and within species, e.g. werewolfery

But why study human responses to animals in the Middle Ages?

"Writing history is one of the efforts societies undertake in order to observe themselves in all dimensions that seem relevant to them. Given the ecological challenges we face today, the environment has become a relevant dimension of historical thinking" (Winiwarter 2003:17)

"If someone should think that the study of animals is an unworthy pursuit, then he must hold entirely the same view about himself" (Aristotle, De partibus animalium)

There are a number of reasons why research into human interactions with animals and their environments in the past is not only interesting and useful from an archaeological or historical perspective, but also highly relevant to our present society. Modern ecological concerns regarding human impact on species overexploitation, extinction, habitat disruption and fragmentation require an awareness and understanding of the cumulative historical effects of human interactions with other organisms. Our choice to conserve certain species and environments is a product of our time, and is very much an ethical and sociopolitical issue, increasingly informed by ecological science (Begon, Harper and Townsend 1996:952). In exploring past ecosystems we are not only reconstructing 'species history', of which humans are an integral part, but linking varying ecological conditions with specific cultural contexts. In focusing on the Middle Ages, we are able to adopt a broad interdisciplinary perspective and address a diverse range of research questions. Here, we are dealing with very different societies to our own, with significantly smaller populations, and varying experiences and understandings of the natural world. Our conclusions will provide a context for the present, and an increasing awareness of the complex relationships between ecology and culture to inform future decisions.

This is perhaps most clear in the case of marine fauna, where the relevance of historical research is outlined by HMAP (History of Marine Animal Populations, historical component of the Census of Marine Life Programme):

"Research is needed into the history of marine animal populations in order to understand the present and manage the future. We need to know what life used to be in the sea in order to assess the current health of the world's oceans, and set targets for future management of the seas."

And from an archaeological perspective:

"our task as archaeologists is to show how humans have used the marine environment and its resources, the successes and failures that we have experienced in that pursuit, the consequences of these successes and failures for the oceans and their resources and also for us." (Monks 2005:172)

Follow the links below to find out more, one of which is a reading list on medieval animals provided in particular for undergraduate students taking paper A28 in the Cambridge Archaeology & Anthropology Tripos.

References

Begon, M. Harper, J. L. and Townsend, C. R. 1996. Ecology: Individuals, Populations and Communities. Oxford.

Monks, G. G. 2005. 'Discussion: sea mammals in zooarchaeology AD 2002', in G. G. Monks (ed.) The Exploitation and Cultural Importance of Sea Mammals. Oxford.

Winiwarter, V. 2003. 'Approaches to environmental history', in J. Laszlovszky and P. Szabó (eds.) People and Nature in Historical Perspective. Budapest.