Medieval Storytime: Animals
For this week’s medieval storytime, Danièle reads a collection of descriptions, fables, and poems all featuring animals. From venomous toads to proud peacocks and malicious whales, the Middle Ages shares its moral worldview through the animal kingdom.
The Medieval Ass with Kathryn Smithies
Although you’d find them in cities and on farms, serving in wars and taking part in religious services, we’re not talking about people (or bottoms). This week on The Medieval Podcast, Danièle speaks with Kathryn L. Smithies about one of the medieval world’s most hardworking creatures and symbols: the donkey.
Warhorses in medieval England are about the size of a modern-day pony, study finds
Warhorses were not always bred for size, but for success in a wide range of different functions – including tournaments and long-distance raiding campaigns.
Why did Bruges get a porpoise each year?
For about three centuries, the coastal town of Blankenberge would send to the nearby city of Bruges a porpoise. A new study examines this tradition and why it happened.
Medieval sheep mummy gives up its DNA
A team of geneticists and archaeologists has sequenced the DNA from a 1,600-year-old sheep mummy from Iran. This remarkable specimen has revealed sheep husbandry practices of the medieval Near East, as well as underlining how natural mummification can affect DNA degradation.
What Medieval Animal Bones Teach Us
Digging up animal bones can teach us a lot about the Middle Ages – in fact, zooarcheologists are able to make them speak! Today’s guest is Erin Crowley-Champoux, a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. She talks with Lucie Laumonier about zooarchaeology and how animal remains of the past can speak to social changes.
Reynard the Fox with Anne Louise Avery
Among the most popular folk heroes of the Middle Ages is one who hails not from a traditional kingdom, but from the animal kingdom. This week on The Medieval Podcast, Danièle speaks with Anne Louise Avery about the charming, troubling, and evergreen trickster, Reynard the Fox.
Medieval Sámi were using draught reindeer, researchers find
Archaeologists at the University of Oulu observed that draught reindeer were used in Finnish Lapland at least 700 years ago.
How to Grow Organic Food like Medieval Farmers
If nothing else works, you could bring the vermin to justice.
Sheep-Rearing in Medieval France
This article investigates the way in which medieval farmers practiced sheep-rearing and looks at the profits they made with their herds.
The Humble Medieval Pig, with Jamie Kreiner
One of the most influential animals of the medieval world, both in the barnyard and on the table, was also one of the most troublesome: the pig. This week, Danièle speaks with Jamie Kreiner about how the humble pig influenced everything from culture to theology.
Study tracks elephant tusks from 16th century shipwreck
The team extracted DNA from 44 tusks. By analyzing genetic sequences known to differ between African forest and savanna elephants, the scientists determined that all of the tusks they analyzed belonged to forest elephants.
The Elephant in the Room, at Gourdon in Burgundy
This talk explores the fragmentary twelfth-century mural depicting an elephant, situated in the lowermost zone, or dado, of the choir wall in the church of Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption at Gourdon, a small village in the Charolais district of Burgundy. T
Medieval Scottish Deer Parks and Beyond, with Kevin Malloy
Kate Buchanan is joined by Kevin Malloy to discuss Kevin’s journey to studying medieval Scottish history, his work on medieval deer parks, and how researching medieval Scottish history can lead to other work.
Medieval Eels with John Wyatt Greenlee
Medieval historians can sometimes study quirky things. For John Wyatt Greenlee it is researching eels in the Middle Ages. This week on The Medieval Podcast, Danièle speaks with Surprised Eel Historian about the impact of this fish on the medieval world – who was eating them, how they were eating them, and why they were sometimes a great way to pay the rent.
Medieval Rabbit Farming
How rabbit farming was a lucrative business in the Middle Ages.
A 525-year old fish story
There are tales of the ‘big fish’ that got away. Now, researchers from Lund University have revealed that a two-metre long Atlantic Sturgeon was able to escape a royal feast, by remaining in a barrel of a sunken ship for the last 525 years.
A pet cat on the Silk Road
It is rare for archaeologists to come across the remains of a buried cat – to find one along the medieval Silk Road is even rarer.
Oh My Dog! St Guinefort and St Christopher
Dogs and holiness in the stories of St Guinefort and St Christopher.
How to get good horses in medieval China
During the Northern Song period, the best regions for horse breeding had been snapped up by powerful steppe empires. So the Chinese state had to turn to other means to obtain good horses, coming up with a variety of innovative and ambitious schemes in the process.
Over-hunting walruses contributed to the collapse of Norse Greenland, study suggests
The mysterious disappearance of Greenland’s Norse colonies sometime in the 15th century may have been down to the overexploitation of walrus populations for their tusks, according to a study of medieval artefacts from across Europe.
Norse arrival on Iceland led to extinction of its walrus population, study finds
A team of researchers have shown that soon after the Norse arrived in Iceland, that island’s species of walrus went extinct.
(Medieval) Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Imagining Animals in the Middle Ages
The wild landscape in the medieval imagination is both enchanting and enchanted.
Dead Dogs are so 9th Century
My research looks at specific acts of ritualised mortuary violence enacted on objects, animals, and people by Vikings in the British Isles, and aims to develop a new interpretative framework with which to consider them.