I am Karina Rapp, and I am an Honorary Associate Research Fellow, Zooarchaeology Masters graduate, and PhD hopeful from the University of Exeter. I am an active horsewoman, equine journalist, and the president of a nonprofit registry that promotes a rare breed of historic cavalry horse, supports global rare breed conservation efforts, and educates the public about the benefits of genetic diversity. I greatly enjoy hands-on research that has the ability to change people’s perspectives on history, especially when it includes faunal remains. The Warhorse project ticks all the boxes for me, and I am so grateful to contribute towards a small part of it! My area of interest is equid conformation (functional shape), and I enjoy exploring ways to adapt modern conformation studies to archaeological remains and skeletal biomechanics.

Archaeological horse bones and material culture (such as bits and armour) can be compared to measurements from modern live horses to give a potential idea of the size and body type of past horses. Several basic types of horse exist, such as small ponies, average horses, and draught horses. This is relevant for reconstructing what the Medieval “Great Horse” actually looked like, and for the very interesting history of selective Medieval horse breeding. By developing a baseline of reliable data from modern horses (including important information such as their height and body type) we can see where ancient horses lie on the allometric spectrum between small ponies and large draughts.

Working remotely in the United States, I have traveled to four barns in southern Idaho to study a variety of animals: working ranch horses, children’s Welsh ponies, show jumping warmbloods, and Belgian draughts used under harness for agricultural work. Measuring a living breathing creature can be more complicated than old bones, though! Hard-edged callipers and bone boards are traded out for flexible seamstress measuring tapes and custom devices for getting around a horse’s muscular curves. Quiet measurements of bones deep in a well-lit lab are traded for dusty barn aisles, quick-moving targets, and sometimes unwilling 1000 lb. subjects in small spaces. The bones of living animals are encased in cartilage and muscle and tendons; it is important to understand that living measurements will never match up exactly with the dry measurements of skeletal materials. Measurements are therefore less about exact bony markers and more about best-guess estimates of chosen data points that correlate as close as possible to certain bone lengths.

Basic body measurements of the horse (such as face and leg measurements) are obtained with a flexible seamstress tape, and can help relate horse size to custom-fit equine armour. Bit sizers are used in the modern horse world to measure a horse’s mouth length in order to choose an appropriately-sized bit (the metal piece that fits in a horse’s mouth) for riding. Bit length is important because a too-small bit can pinch or damage the skin of the mouth, and a too-large bit can slide through the horse’s mouth and knock against cheek teeth while riding. In an archaeological context, we can take an actual historical bit and compare it to our baseline collection of mouth/bit lengths from modern horses. Together with other data, bit length could give us an idea of the potential size of the ancient horses who may have worn them.

A standard height-weight horse and pony tape is also used to calculate the height of each horse, which is important allometric data along with general information, such as the horse’s known breed (which indicates its body type, such as pony, small stock horse, draft, or warmblood). Even if a horse’s height is known by the owner, it’s good scientific practice to maintain consistency with data recording; one person takes each measurement for each horse, therefore limiting the human error factor.

While actual hooves have a small chance of appearing in the archaeological record, horse shoes are much more durable. And because horses wear many, many sets of shoes in their lifetime, it is more likely that we might find historical horse shoes. But what good are these artefacts if we have nothing to compare them to? How do we know the size of the horses who wore them? Taking a look at the size and shape of many living horses’ feet can be one way to figure that out. Measuring something as variable and oddly shaped as a horse’s foot can be tricky though, and this is where a little bit of creativity is needed. We have called the device developed for Warhorse our “Hoofometer”; it is a simple piece of clear plaskolite with two traditional scale bars added. By holding a horse’s hoof (as one does when cleaning their feet) and holding the hoofometer flat against the bottom of their hoof, it is possible to photograph it and therefore create a picture that can be shared with other researchers. They can then choose which measurements to take and how to define the shape and size of the foot.

Another tricky measurement that requires a creative solution is the hip of the horse. Rounded and bulging with muscle, it is not the kind of body part that can be measured with a simple seamstress tape. Such a measurement would result in a contour that follows the slope of muscle, and a contour measurement is a lot harder to relate directly to a skeletal measurement. Two metre sticks and some light hardware and scale bars are all that is needed to create a device that takes straight measurements of large muscled areas such as the hip. The sliding scale has two arms that rest against the chosen data points, resulting in a number that is a little closer to the greatest length of the pelvis.

Modern methods (such as the use of bit sizers for bit length and measuring a horse’s hoof for shoe size) can sometimes be useful when examining material culture in an equine context, and while not directly comparable, live body measurements can provide an interesting dataset next to skeletal measurements. Zooarchaeology can sometimes require interesting experiments and creative thinking, which makes it an endlessly enjoyable endeavour. Plus, any data-gathering that requires paying the subjects in carrots is a special bonus! I am immensely grateful to the team of Warhorse for letting me join their fun, and I look forward to the results of this great collaborative project.

Digital Camera

I am Camille Vo Van Qui and I am a new PGR student at the University of Exeter. In September, I started a PhD on the breaking-in and training of horses in medieval France, under the supervision of Professor Oliver Creighton (Archaeology) and Dr Helen Birkett (History).

I had started to work on this subject for my Master’s degree at Sorbonne Université (Paris IV) in Paris, prompted by a passion for real life horses and horse-training. At the end of this two-year degree, I decided to go on with a PhD, as I felt there were still many aspects of medieval horse-training to uncover. The University of Exeter’s Warhorse project made it the ideal environment in which to do so.

The main source I am intending to use is the De Medicina Equorum, written in Latin by the Italian knight Jordanus Rufus (Giordano Ruffo) of Calabria (c. 1200 – c. 1254) in 1250. It is a veterinary treaty and has been extensively studied from a hippiatric point of view, but its first chapters contain a very complete method for taming, breaking-in and training a horse – assumedly a warhorse given the context and the identity of the author. In the years following its production, the treaty was translated in several vernacular languages, including Italian, Sicilian, French and Occitan.

I am intending to study the French versions of this text: there are, to this day, nine manuscripts in that language. What interests me is to determine how the method elaborated by Jordanus Rufus was reinterpreted by the copyists and translators: the text varies greatly from one manuscript to the other, with some significant changes which could point at different training techniques and traditions. In several manuscripts, the chapters on horse-training have been abridged. Others show variations in the type of equipment used. To give one example, some versions state that the horse should first be ridden without spurs and that the rider should have a crop, while others omit that recommendation.

Rufus’s text has also been reused by other authors, such as Pietro de Crescenzi (1230 – c. 1320), in the Opus Ruralium Commodorum (also translated in French), in the first years of the 14^th century or Guillaume de Villiers, in another veterinary treaty, in the mid-15^th, among others. Again, analysing the changes they may have made to the original source can help to have a more complete picture of how horse-training was put into practice, or at least discover what techniques were the most widespread in a given cultural and geographical landscape.

Those changes also raise the question of knowing what type of horses were concerned by this training method. Rufus certainly had warhorses in mind when he wrote. However, Pietro de Crescenzi’s Opus Ruralium Commodorum, is an agricultural treaty. Do the transformations he makes to Rufus’s method indicate a focus on rounceys rather than destriers? How significant are those changes? Horse breaking and training is always done with a purpose: the future use of the horse. Though some techniques transcend this, the way a draught horse used for ploughing, a riding horse and a warhorse are trained will vary as much as what is expected from them differs.

In the case of warhorses, those expectations would have been to have an animal who would listen to his rider, respond to his aids and be easily controllable on a battlefield. He would have had to turn, stop and gallop, easily and on demand. Yet, having an obedient mount was not the only goal. Horse-training is, whatever the time and culture it takes place in, influenced by the way those animals are perceived, by the symbolism applied to them and by a degree of anthropomorphising. It goes further than the simple usability of the horse, and this is also what I intend to study.

It would be limiting to work on a subject such as the breaking-in and training of horses from a purely literary and theoretical point of view. This is the reason why I am also going to look at archaeological evidence, such as the remains of bits and spurs. Horse-breaking and training necessitates a number of tools, some of which, like the bits, are precisely described by Rufus. Those descriptions can be compared to the available archaeological material. The study of archaeological sources can also help to ascertain what effect the equipment used would have had on actual horses.

I look forward to furthering this project and to working alongside the Warhorse team!

I am Laura Jones, and I joined the project as a University of Exeter undergraduate Archaeology and History student in the summer of 2020. I am grateful to all the team for taking me on board and bringing me into the world of all things horse-related. Being a former secondary teacher, an intern at the University’s Digital Humanities Lab and a volunteer within the archaeology collections at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, I hope to bring my experience of material culture and public engagement to the project. Working alongside Rob Webley, I am focusing on the material culture package of the project that includes the Portable Antiquities Scheme’s (PAS) data to bring more understanding to our knowledge of medieval horse equipment – see Rob’s previous PAS post here. Whilst interpreting the PAS data, we have also been on a hunt for medieval horse iconography from across the UK/Europe to enhance our understanding of medieval horse equipment and how the medieval warhorse was perceived and represented.

Figure 1- Exeter Cathedral misericord of a locust like figure- ‘courtesy of the Dean & Chapter of Exeter Cathedral’ 2020.

Strikingly apparent is how the warhorse was an iconic figure within the medieval world and its imagination; most interestingly- and quite apt at the time writing, amidst the 2020 Covid pandemic – is how horses were depicted within medieval apocalyptic manuscripts. Brought to our attention by the Principal Investigator of the project Professor Oliver Creighton, is the representation on Misericord no. 41 (c.1240-70) at Exeter Cathedral (see Figure 1) of a locust-like figure – one of the Bible’s ‘locusts’ from the Book of Revelations (9:3). These locusts ‘“were like unto horses prepared for battle [with] breastplates of iron [and] their sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots [of] horses rushing to battle”’ (KJV, Rev. 9: 7-9). The locust figure is equipped with protective mail barding and a saddle with a high pommel and cantle – designed for keeping the rider on their horse. Does the representation of horse equipment in apocalyptic iconography, despite perhaps being as far removed from reality, give us some insight into medieval horse equipment? How did artists grapple with their depiction of ‘breastplates of iron’ in the phase prior to horse armour usage in the late 12^th century in comparison to before plate armour was consistently used in the 14^th century?

Figure 2: Selden Supra Part 2 Folio 69r, sourced from: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Illumination (from 35mm), Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Folio 94 – from Beatus of Liébana’s Las Huelgas Apocalypse (1220), now held in The Morgan Library and Museum, New York (MS M.429, f.94), depicts the riders wearing mail but not the locusts. On first inspection, one could assume the locusts could be wearing armour; the white highlights on the horses in the breast and hind regions create a shine to the locusts: something that is usually seen with armour. However, when compared to other depictions, it is clear the highlight accentuates the musculature qualities and powerful strength of those areas that drive the warhorse. The saddles once again hold their riders in with a high pommel and cantle. Using iconography, despite its artistic nature, therefore allows us to assess trends in horse equipment, how it was used and in combination with the archaeological data and to apply chronological information to it.

Figure 3: Canonici Apocalypse, Folio 10v, sourced from: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Illumination (from 35mm), Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.

Mail barding worn by horses was very common by the 13^th century. Similar to the misericord at Exeter Cathedral are the examples of locusts wearing mail barding (see Figure 2) in the Selden Supra, circa 1315-1325 (MS. Selden Supra 38, Part. 2, f.69r). Another good example is seen in Figure 3 from the Canonici Apocalypse, 1320-1330 (MS. Canon. Bibl. Lat. 62, f.10v). This shows a range of horse equipment. The familiar trend of the saddle that holds its rider in (high pommel and cantle), a girth to keep the saddle in place and horseshoes which aid durability of the hoof are clearly illustrated, linking the locust to the figure of the warhorse. This folio clearly depicts the importance of horse equipment being suitable for battle. What is interesting is that it is rare to find mail barding depicted earlier than the 13th century. However, Rob Webley came across Folio 23 (Figure 4) from the Bamberger Apokalypse of c.1020 (Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Inventar-Nr. Bibl. 140, f. 23r.) which is one of the earliest examples of mail barding depicted in medieval iconography that we have personally found so far on a horse or horse-like figure.

Figure 4: Bamberger Apokalypse, Folio 23r, sourced from: Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Msc.Bibl.140. Photo: Gerald Raab. Made available through CC-BY-SA 4.0.

These examples are relevant to our discussions of not only how the medieval warhorse and its equipment were perceived but also how and why they could have been used. Applying due source criticism, we can match up iconographical depictions with material culture, understand typologies within the equipment and try to establish chronological frameworks for our understanding of the medieval warhorse. As our iconographical horse hunt continues alongside our work on material culture for the project, it will be interesting to see what other depictions/material comes to light and what we can learn from them.

Look at a large-scale Ordnance Survey map and it is perhaps surprising to see how many places that exist today owe their name to the presence of horses: Horsham, Horsely, Horsebridge, Studleigh and so on (Fig. 1).  One of the aims of Warhorse is to shed more light on what we might call ‘equine landscapes’ of the Middle Ages, and place-names represent an important category of evidence for investigation. Significantly for the project, many of our modern ‘horse’ names have Old English origins and so provide a valuable dataset for analysis.

Fig. 1 Horse place-names – East and West Horsley in Hampshire

Terms that refer to horses appear in both ‘major’ place-names given to settlements and also as more ‘minor’ names often given to fields or farms. Nationally there are literally hundreds of them. Clearly at some point in the past horses were such a feature of these places that they warranted naming as such and so our horse place-names potentially provide us with evidence for the location of specific breeding sites or concentrations of hooves on the ground. So far, so good.

But the interpretation of place-names is complicated by a number of factors. Firstly, there is the difficulty of whether names attest to the commonplace – a name relating to horses might indicate an abundance that made for a distinguishing feature – or the opposite – a scarcity of horses in any given area might mean those places where they did exist were distinctive. Secondly, names are not always straightforward: Maresfield in Sussex derives from Old English mere ‘pool’ rather than denoting the presence of equines.  Thirdly, names are often very difficult to date precisely. Clearly a proportion of the horse names found today are relatively recent (think of how many Black Horse pubs there are out there) and the exact date of many minor names, which are probably medieval, but where we would like more precision for the purposes of analysis, are frustratingly elusive. Fortunately, for major place-names, documentary evidence often confirms an early date (Domesday Book is very helpful here) and these cases must reflect in some way horse management in the pre-Conquest period.

Fig. 2Modern Landscape of Horsey, Norfolk

One such place is Horsey in north east Norfolk on the edge of the Broads (Fig. 2). In 1086 Domesday Book records the name Horseia meaning ‘horse island’ – from the Old English hors ‘horse’ and ēg ‘island’. Go there today and while you will struggle to find it (this is Norfolk remember), there are traces of a gentle hill where the church now stands and from which the ‘island’ part of the name was presumably taken. In the late eleventh century this island would have stood at the mouth of what is now the river Thurne and today’s semi-drained farmland would have been a wide expanse of estuarine salt marsh and grazing, something readily appreciable today even if the ‘island’ is not (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 What is now drained farmland would have been wetland grazing in the eleventh century.

So why ‘horse’ island? As the project is discovering, there is some evidence that the place name hors, denoted feral or semi-feral herds, and here it is interesting that Domesday Book also records large numbers of what it calls ‘wild mares’ in neighbouring manors. Such feral herds were presumably exploited much in the way that they are today, perhaps with young animals being drawn off on a cyclical basis for breaking in and use elsewhere.

So – should we be imagining a feral horse population around Horsey in the Anglo-Saxon period grazing on the extensive wetlands, perhaps analogous to Camargue horses in modern France? Perhaps the Norfolk Horsey was not unique as ‘horse islands’ are also found in the Somerset and Pevensey Levels, the Peterborough Fens, on the Essex coast and what is now Portsmouth harbour – once all very similar environments. And would the horse living in these landscapes had different characteristics to those grazing in different surroundings, such as upland Exmoor and Dartmoor, which Domesday Book shows was clearing taking place? Warhorse is currently exploring these and many other issues and it will be fascinating to see if the zooarchaeology and material culture strands of the project can help us to further refine our understanding of these early horse landscapes. It’s all in the name (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 A dim echo of a horse landscape of the Anglo-Saxon period? The clue is in the name…

5 June 2020 marked the 500 year anniversary of the meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Members of the Warhorse team investigated the role that horses  played at this meeting as part of an online exhibit curated by the Royal Armouries.

https://royalarmouries.org/stories/all-the-kings-horses/

In our search for Medieval warhorses, we naturally will encounter a large quantity of horses not used in combat. The zooarchaeological record in Britain is full of horses, from the impressive Iron Age human/horse chariot burials, to the Post-Medieval remains of work horses. The task for those of us working on the bones of these animals is identifying signs that could indicate what the horses were being used for while alive. Because of the biased nature of preservation of biological remains, we frequently encounter bones and teeth, but rarely find evidence of more delicate materials, such as skin, fur, hair and muscle. Thus, it is our job to find proxies for these things with the faunal data we do have.

Muscles are a hugely important factor in how a horse moves, and those used for work (draught horses) would have utilised their muscles in very different ways from those used primarily for riding, or combat. Though we cannot study the muscles themselves, bones leave evidence of the nature of musculoskeletal loadings at the point where the muscle is attached to the bone. By looking at these areas of muscle attachment, we can investigate changes in robusticity, and changes in size, shape and surface complexity of horse bones.

As an analogy, imagine a draught horse as a front wheel drive car, deriving its power from the forelimbs, pulling with the aid of a harness. In contrast, in combat a horse is a rear wheel drive car, and would need to be able to perform short bursts of speed, and turn in tight, quick movements. It is likely this power would be derived from the hindlimbs. These vastly different movements repeated over the life of the animal would induce stress to the muscles, and the attached bones. 

But, what can we expect to see on these bones? There are a few different ways that we are investigating these morphological changes, and a previous blog post discussed the 3D methods we are using. However, in-life movement and stress not only affect the surface of the bone, but also the internal structures. Studies of living horses have successfully used CT scanning and x-ray to investigate the internal structures of the lower limb bones (metapodia) providing a measurement of cortical thickness which has been shown to change depending on in-life usage of the horse. A few weeks ago, we used the x-ray in the archaeological science labs at the University of Exeter, to investigate the ability of x-ray to show the cortical thickness in archaeological bones.

We investigated how the cortical thickness changed at different locations on the bone (i.e. near the ends and towards the centre of the shaft). This was preliminary investigative work to determine a sampling strategy for all the bones in our assemblage. We wanted to see how the cortical thickness changed along the bone, and decide on a standardised place to measure its thickness from. From the x-ray images of the horse bones, we will be able to measure the thickness of the cortical wall and compare this with the thickness of modern horses with known in-life activities.

Helene Benkert, a doctoral student studying at the University of Exeter as part of the Warhorse project, went on a fact-finding mission to the Royal Armouries to experience their world-famous Easter jousting event. In future years the project hopes to develop display materials that can help engage with members of the public at these events.

Helene writes:
The International Jousting Competition at the Royal Armouries in Leeds is a huge event. Even in our modern times, jousting can still draw a big crowd. It wasn’t any different back in the medieval period.

Perhaps a little like football matches today, nobility would come together to ride, fight and cheer. Those knights successful enough would be celebrated like stars. Often enough, however, a career was ended prematurely through serious injuries or even death of the combatant, and attrition rates for horses were notoriously high.
Tournaments emerged in eleventh and twelfth centuries as a way to train for war and pass time between battles and campaigns. Soon they developed into the biggest sports events for nobles and a stage to show off skill as much as wealth and status.

The joust, where two knights on their valuable warhorses would charge at each other with lances, is the most widely known part of these competitions. Horses, of course, were an integral part of these tournaments.

The horses competing with their “knights” at the Royal Armouries in 2019 are sporting their owner’s colours and shiny metal chaffrons are protecting their heads. They pick up on the excitement of the audience and reenactors around them, ears pricked and prancing about the arena.

These are stunt horses – professionals – from Atkinson Action Horses, and they are used to all sorts of noise and racket. They are highly trained, just like medieval war and tournament horses had to be excellently trained to ensure their riders’ safety and, of course, victory. The horses were and are the real stars, directed by the knight in the saddle.

Back in the Middle Ages, a destrier or charger would have been the best bred and trained horse on the market and sold for exorbitant prices only the very rich could afford. Bigger than normal working horses, these were swift, fierce and strong stallions, clad in silver armour.

They certainly are impressive to watch in the tilt yard of the Royal Armouries as they gallop towards each other in the bright colours of their owner’s house. It is easy to imagine people enjoying this kind of entertainment so many centuries ago as the modern crowd cheers for their favourites.

Next year we will be back, with lots of facts and fun on and around medieval horses. So come and join us for talks, activities, crafts or a chat.

A large component of the Warhorse project is the analysis of horse bones from medieval archaeological sites across Britain. Zooarchaeology, the study of ancient animal remains, provides insight into the unique roles that animals held in the past, both as food but also more significantly as important companions critically linked to social and cultural practices. The bones of these animals can tell us about their physical appearance, health, age at death and lifestyle, all of which combine to help us better understand the use of horses in the medieval period, and particularly to highlight the impact of their use in warfare.

   Fig.1 Assorted animal bones, including horse from Ipplepen, Devon

Animal bones are frequently recovered in large numbers from archaeological sites in Britain, often in refuse pits where the bones are the remains of food waste (Fig. 1). However, animal bones are also found as part of special deposits that could include animals which were given their own burials, animals included in human burials, or animals which were ritually deposited in other contexts. Understanding the context that remains are found in is an important first step for interpreting the roles of horse in the medieval period. While some burials of complete horse skeletons do exist, more often horse remains will be isolated elements as part of larger bone assemblages of many different species.

Fig.2 Disarticulated horse skeleton

For the Warhorse project, we will be using a combination of approaches to analyse these horse remains to integrate as many strands of evidence as possible for understanding the variation of medieval horses. We will begin by using traditional zooarchaeological techniques, which include taking a series of standardised measurements from the animal bones. These metrics will be used to provide evidence of size changes related to stature, including a detailed and systematic study of size, robusticity and shape, which could help us identify changes related to the increased use of horses in military activities. We will also record pathologies associated with working horses, such as spavin in the lower legs, back pathologies and bitting damage, to provide evidence for activities associated with military use/training.

Fig.3 Anatomical drawing of horse skeleton, showing location of elements used for GMM

Alongside these traditional metric analyses, we will apply advanced 3D geometric morphometrics (GMM) to study variations in astragalus and calcaneus bones. These particular elements have been selected as they are easily identified within archaeological assemblages and tend to preserve very well in one piece, an essential criterion for 3D GMM. Because these elements are located in the limbs (Fig. 3), their morphological variation is likely to indicate during life changes related to locomotor requirement. These requirements would likely differ between horses used for military and domestic purposes. Digital 3D models will be created through a well-used method of structure-from-motion photogrammetry (Fig. 4), which is quick, inexpensive, and does not damage specimens. By combining both the traditional metrics with these more advanced GMM techniques, we will be able to generate a new, independent chronology of changing horse size, morphology and appearance which will increase our ability to detect husbandry practices and management strategies during the medieval period, and hopefully identify a unique horse morphology specific to horses used for military purposes.

Fig.4 (top) Horse astragalus being photographed using photogrammetry, and (bottom), horse calcaneus during the modelling process.