In much of Europe, the advent of low-input cereal farming regimes betweenc.ad800 and 1200 enabled landowners—lords—to amass wealth by greatly expanding the amount of land under cultivation and exploiting the labour of others. Scientific analysis of plant remains and animal bones from archaeological contexts is generating the first direct evidence for the development of such low-input regimes. This article outlines the methods used by the FeedSax project to resolve key questions regarding the ‘cerealization’ of the medieval countryside and presents preliminary results using the town of Stafford as a worked example. These indicate an increase in the scale of cultivation in the Mid-Saxon period, while the Late Saxon period saw a shift to a low-input cultivation regime and probably an expansion onto heavier soils. Crop rotation appears to have been practised from at least the mid-tenth century.

To provide a comparative baseline for future studies of oral pathology in domestic livestock and to better understand connections between lesion prevalence and biological context in past animal populations. Over 1600 sheep and cattle mandibles recovered from archaeological sites in England between 500 and 1300 CE. A comprehensive investigation of periodontal disease was conducted based on four characteristics: dental calculus; periosteal new bone formation; alveolar recession; and ante-mortem tooth loss. The anatomical position and severity of these lesions were quantified and correlated against the age of each individual. Two types of periosteal new bone formation were recognized: one in the growing mandibles of young animals, the other in older animals and associated with disease. The incidence of calculus and alveolar recession increase with age. Correlations exist between calculus, alveolar recession and periosteal new bone formation. Disruption caused by the eruption of the P4 is also implied as a contributory factor to the onset of periodontal disease. When interpreting periodontal disease in zooarchaeological collections it is vital to consider the effect of age as well as environmental and genetic factors. This is the first comprehensive zooarchaeological study to investigate the effect of age on periodontal disease. It provides a better understanding of the frequency and presentation of periodontal disease as a baseline for future studies. Cattle mandibles are under-represented due to poor survival. Ideally, radiographs of mandibles with ante-mortem tooth loss would be taken, but this was not possible. The role of genetic factors, diet and environment needs to be better understood.

Improve understanding of the links between biological variables (sex, body size and anatomical position) and adaptive remodelling of autopodia, and the identification of traction use in the archaeological record. A modified version of the recording system for identifying draught cattle in the archaeological record (Bartosiewicz et al., 1997) was applied to a sample of 1509 bones from six sites from medieval England. Analysis focused on identifying correlations between pathological and sub-pathological changes in lower-limb bones in relation to anatomy, sex and body mass. A correlation between sex, body mass and lower limb bone changes was demonstrated. The need to consider anterior and posterior limb bone elements separately to maximise the potential for identifying cattle used for traction was identified. Changes in hindlimb elements were highlighted as the most useful indicator of draught use. This study provides new, detailed evidence for a previously poorly understood correlation between the effects of anatomical position, sex and body size and the nature of skeletal changes traditionally associated with draught cattle. It pulls together findings and makes comprehensive suggestions for future studies. This is a purely methodological paper. Although general results are presented, there is insufficient space to include a full case study. This will be published separately within the results of the FeedSax project. Future studies into the use of cattle for draught purposes in the past should take in to account the sex and size of the animals under consideration, and analyse anterior and posterior elements separately.

Across medieval Europe, cattle commanded a major, if shifting, economic and social value, and their use for meat, milk, and traction is well established. Although the changing roles of cattle throughout this period may have influenced relationships between humans and cattle, this has been largely neglected in historical and zooarchaeological studies. Data from nearly 700 archaeological assemblages of animal remains have been used to provide an overview of the herd structures (age and sex) of cattle populations for England between AD 450 and 1400. These have been analysed alongside pathological and sub-pathological changes in over 2800 lower limb bones of cattle from seventeen archaeological sites to provide a better understanding of the use of cattle for ploughing, hauling, and carting. The findings were considered alongside historical documents and ethnographic evidence to chart changing human–cattle relationships. Results indicate that human–cattle relations varied with changing economic, agricultural, and social practices. From the mid-fifth century, cattle were a form of portable wealth, however, by the mid-ninth century, they were perceived as a commodity with monetary value. From this period, close human–cattle bonds are likely to have been widespread between plough hands and working animals. Such bonds are may have diminished with the increasing number of young beef cattle kept to supply the urban population from the mid-eleventh century.

Here, we assess the extent to which land use relating to food acquisition (farming, herding, foraging) and associated value regimes shaped past economic inequality. We consider the hypothesis that land-use systems in which production was limited by heritable material wealth (such as land) sustained higher levels of inequality than those limited by (free) human labor. We address this hypothesis using the Global Dynamics of InequalIty (GINI) project database, estimating economic inequalities based on disparities in residential unit area and storage capacity within sites in different world regions and through time. We find that inequality was significantly greater in land-limited than labor-limited regimes, whether based on residence area or storage capacity, though governance could moderate these differences. Increasing inequality with larger residence and/or site size is associated with underlying shifts from labor- to land-limited economies. Transitions from labor- to land-limited regimes also appear to underlie the development of extended political hierarchies. Increases in inequality after cultivation became common in each hemisphere similarly reflect shifts from labor- to land-limited systems. Land-limited systems in the eastern hemisphere, incorporating animal traction, exhibit an upward trend in inequality over time, while a downward trend in the western hemisphere reflects the lower persistence of land-limited regimes based solely on human labor.

The early Middle Ages saw a major expansion of cereal cultivation across large parts of Europe thanks to the spread of open-field farming. A major project to trace this expansion in England by deploying a range of scientific methods is generating direct evidence for this so-called ‘Medieval Agricultural Revolution’.