About this book
The human past is unimaginable without the horse. From our ancestors hunting and painting horses in the Upper Palaeolithic to the earliest riders, the rise of equestrian empires, and the critical role of horses in war, settler colonialism, and modern state formation, human history is undeniably equestrian. Because of the deep and varied entanglements between people and horses, the study of horses of the past is inherently and increasingly interdisciplinary. However, scholars often do not understand the methods or know the research outside of their discipline.
This book corrals a herd of specialist authors from seventeen countries who explain their disciplinary approaches and provide case studies of human-horse relationships in the past, including archaeology, history, classics, art history, literature, and veterinary medicine.
This ground-covering volume overviews key methods, theory, period, and area studies. Aimed at scholars wanting to understand and incorporate research outside of their speciality or those who wish to undertake collaborative projects, it is also designed as a starting point for students and non-specialists to pursue the study of horses in the past.
Contents
Foreword / Alan Outram
Introduction / Katherine Kanne, Helene Benkert, and Camille M.L. Vo Van Qui
Part 1: Methods
- Archaeology of the Horse / Katherine Kanne and Helene Benkert
- Advanced Methods in Zooarchaeology / Katherine M. French
- Art History for Historians and Archaeologists: Using Visual Culture as Source Material / Lonneke Delpeut
- Methodologies in Classics / Carolyn Willekes
- Interdisciplinary Research Methods in History: The Example of Medieval Horses in Western Europe / Camille M.L. Vo Van Qui
Part 2: Horses Through Time
- Horse Domestication and Early Use / Katherine Kanne
- Horses in Ancient Egypt / Lonneke Delpeut and Heidi Köpp-Junk
- Introducing Horses to Kofun Japan: The Dawn of Equine Culture focussing on Kawachi (河内) (Current Osaka Region) / Chun Ho Kim
- Horse and Rider in the Avar Empire (late 6th-early 9th century AD) / Birgit Bühler
- Horses in the Viking Age / Harriet J. Evans Tang
- The History and Historiography of the Horse in India / Yashaswini Chandra
Part 3: Working and Living with Horses
- Approaches to Researching Horse Training in Medieval Western Europe: Thirteenth to Fifteenth centuries / Camille M.L. Vo Van Qui
- The Horse in European Warfare / Helene Benkert and Birgit Bühler
- History of Equine Veterinary Medicine / Savaş Volkan Genç
- Hippophagy / Katherine M. French
- European Women in the Sideways and the Side-saddle / Bettina Keil-Steentjes
- The Horse in Literature – From Status Symbol to Companion / Cristina Oliveros Calvo and Anastasija Ropa
- Equestrian Sports Through the Ages / Anastasija Ropa
- Horses as Cultural Heritage: The Cretan Horse / Věra Klontza-Jaklova
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Biography
Kate Kanne is an anthropological archaeologist investigating the evolution and bioarchaeology of domestication relationships, including agropastoralism, the origins and spread of equestrianism in the European Bronze Age, and the development of mounted warfare, in order to interrogate their effects on the long-term trajectory of sociopolitical and anthropogenic change.
Helene Benkert completed her MSc at the University of Sheffield with a specialisation in zooarchaeology. Her PhD thesis (2023, Exeter) investigated horse stature and morphology in medieval Europe, in collaboration with the AHRC-funded Project "Warhorse - A medieval revolution?".
After a Master's degree at Sorbonne Universite (France), Camille Vo Van Qui completed a PhD in medieval studies at the University of Exeter (UK), on the topic of "The breaking-in and training of horses in medieval France (1250-1550)". This interdisciplinary project used methodologies from the field of animal studies and a combination of historical, archaeological, and iconographic sources and focuses primarily on French translations of Jordanus Rufus's De medicina equorum (c. 1250).
