Reading List

This is a basic reading list on animals for students at the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, taking the Medieval Britain (A28) module. All the books and articles can be found somewhere in Cambridge...if not please let me know...

1) General (including written sources)

Cummins, J. 1998 (2001). The Hound and the Hawk: the Art of Medieval Hunting. Phoenix Press.
Flores. N.C. (ed.) 1996. Animals in the Middle Ages: a Book of Essays. New York; London: Garland.
Hammond, P.W. 1993. Food and Feast in Medieval England. Stroud: Alan Sutton.
Hensich, B.A. 1976. Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Honegger, T. 1996. From Phoenix to Chauntecleer: Medieval English Animal Poetry. Tubingen: Francke Verlag.
Mead, W.E. 1931. The English Medieval Feast. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Pluskowski, A.G. (ed.) 2002. Medieval Animals (Archaeological Review from Cambridge, 18).
Salisbury, J.E. 1994. The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages. London: Routledge.
Schmitt, J-C. 1982. The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (trans. Thom, M.)
Veale, E.M. 1966. The English Fur Trade in the later Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ziolkowski, J. M. 1993. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry. 750-1150. University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania University Press.

2) Zooarchaeology (see also animal bone reports within individual site reports)

Albarella, U. 1999. ‘ “The mystery of husbandry”: medieval animals and the problem of integrating historical and archaeological evidence’, Antiquity 73:867-75.
Aston, M (ed.) 1988. Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England. BAR, British Series 182, vol 1 and 2. Oxford.
Bond, J.M. and O’Connor, T.P. 1999. Bones from Medieval Deposits at 16-22 Coppergate and other Sites in York. York: Council for British Archaeology for the York Archaeological Trust.
Cameron, E. 1998. Leather and Fur: Aspects of Early medieval Trade and Technology. London: Archetype Publications for the Archaeological Leather Group.
Cowie, R, et al. 1999. 'A late medieval and Tudor horse burial ground: excavations at Elverton Street, Westminster', Archaeological Journal, 155, 226-251.
Dobney, K.M. Jaques, S.D. and Irving, B.G. 1996. Of Butchers and Breeds. Report on Vertebrate Remains from Various Sites in City of Lincoln. Lincoln Archaeological Studies 5. Lincoln: City of Lincoln Archaeology Unit.
Gidney, L. 2000. ‘Economic trends, craft specialisation and social status: bone assemblages from Leicester’, in Rowley-Conwy, P. (ed.) Animal Bones, Human Societies. Oxford: Oxbow. 170-178.
MacGregor, A. 1985. Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn. The Technology of Skeletal Material Since the Roman Period. London: Croom Helm.
MacGregor, A., Mainman, A.J. and Rogers, N.S.H. 1999. Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn from Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York. The Archaeology of York 17: the small finds. York: CBA for the York Archaeological Trust.
Maltby, M. 1979. Faunal Studies on Urban Sites: the Animal Bones from Exeter 1971-75. Sheffield: Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Sheffield.
O’Connor. T.P. 1982. Animal Bones from Flaxengate, Lincoln. C.870-1500. London: CBA for the Lincoln Archaeological Trust.
O'Connor, T. P. 1993. 'Bone assemblages from monastic sites: many questions but few data', in Gilchrist, R. and Mytum, H. (eds.) Advances in Monastic Archaeology, BAR British Series 227. 107-112.
Serjeanston, D. 2000. ‘Good to eat and good to think with: classifying animals from complex sites.’ In Rowley-Conwy, P. (ed.) Animal bones, human societies. Oxford: Oxbow. 179-189.
Smith, C. 1998. 'Dogs, cats and horses in the Scottish medieval town', Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 128:859-885.
Yalden. D.W. 1999. The History of British Mammals. London: Poyser.

3) Iconography

General

Benton, J.B. 1992. The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages. New York: London: Abbeville Press.
Camille, M. 1995. Images on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art. London: Reaktion.
Klingender, F. 1971. Animals in Art and Thought to the End of the Middle Ages. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Sekules, V. 2001. Medieval Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Varty, K. 1967. Reynard the Fox: a Study of the Fox in Medieval English Art. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Varty, K. 1999. Reynard, Renart, Reinaert and other Foxes in Medieval England: the iconographic evidence. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Case studies

Lawrens Andrewe's The noble lyfe & nature of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles & fisshes y be moste knowen
Gaston Phoebus’ Book of the Hunt (Livre de la Chasse) illumination facsimiles
and also here...
Online Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (some examples of Romanesque animal depictions)

Bestiaries

Baxter, R. 1998. Bestiaries and their Users in the Middle Ages. Stroud: Sutton.
Clark, B. and McMunn, M.T. (eds.) 1989. Beasts and Birds of the Middle Ages: the Bestiary and its Legacy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
George, W. and Yapp, B. 1991. The Naming of Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary. London: Duckworth.
Hassig, D. 1995. Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hassig, D. (ed.) 1999. The Mark of the Beast: the Medieval Bestiary in Art, Life and Literature. New York; London: Garland.
White, T.H (ed.) 1984 (2001). The Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century. Gloucester: Alan Sutton.
Aberdeen Bestiary Project

Fantastic Beasts

Freeman, M. B. 1976. The Unicorn Tapestries: the Set of Late Gothic Tapestries at The Cloisters. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Husband, T. 1980. The Wild Man: Medieval Myth and Symbolism. New York: Met Museum of Art.
Williams, D. 1999. Deformed Discourse: the Function of the Monster in Medieval Thought and Literature. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Williamson, J. 1986. The Oak King, the Holly King, and the Unicorn: the Myths and Symbolism of the Unicorn Tapestries. New York: Harper & Row.

For more detailed and specific references, refer to the individual bibliographies of the above.

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