Improvements in animal husbandry between the end of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era in England and the Basque Country: a Zooarchaeological Comparison

Although many historians have extensively discussed the agricultural history of Europe between the late Middle Ages and the modern era, this period of crucial changes has received less attention from archaeologists. In this paper, zooarchaeological evidence from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period is studied to investigate evidence for improvements in animal husbandry during the ‘long’ sixteenth century. The size and shape of the principal domestic animals (cattle, sheep, pig, and chicken) are explored through biometrical data and integrated with evidence of taxonomic frequencies, age-at-death, and sex ratios. Evidence from twelve English sites and nine Basque sites is compared. The results show that in England a remarkable size increase of animals occurred throughout the post-medieval period, with much of this improvement occurring in the sixteenth century. In the Basque Country, a slight improvement is attested only during the ‘long’ sixteenth century, while in the following centuries the size of the animals decreased, perhaps in relation to the economic crisis that affected the Iberian Peninsula for much of the seventeenth century. The nature and causes of these changes and the different scenarios characterizing the two countries are discussed with the aim of understanding the development of early modern farming and the foundations of the so-called Agricultural Revolution.