The warhorse is arguably the most characteristic animal of the English Middle Ages. But while the development
and military uses of warhorses have been intensively studied by historians, the archaeological evidence is too
often dispersed, overlooked or undervalued. Instead, we argue that to fully understand the cultural significance
and ...
The warhorse is arguably the most characteristic animal of the English Middle Ages. But while the development
and military uses of warhorses have been intensively studied by historians, the archaeological evidence is too
often dispersed, overlooked or undervalued. Instead, we argue that to fully understand the cultural significance
and functional role of the medieval warhorse, a systematic study of the full range of archaeological evidence for
warhorses (and horses more generally) from medieval England is necessary. This requires engagement with
material evidence at a wide variety of scales — from individual artefacts through to excavated assemblages and
landscape-wide distributions — dating between the late Saxon and Tudor period (c. AD 800–1600). We present
here a case study of our interdisciplinary engaged research design focusing upon an important English royal stud
site at Odiham in Hampshire. This brings together several fields of study, including (zoo)archaeology, history,
landscape survey, and material culture studies to produce new understandings about a beast that was an
unmistakable symbol of social status and a decisive weapon on the battlefield.
