Medieval resources

I am interested in how people in medieval Europe have managed various resources to make the most of their potential. I have looked extensively at agricultural landscapes and the environment in the early Anglo-Norman period (1066-1135) in England and Normandy. I have also published on swine husbandry and agricultural practice in the High and Late Middle Ages in both city and countryside.

The Medieval Pig

The pig was a common sight in the Middle Ages. They might be eating under an oak tree, or out in a field. They might be in the street, with the swineherd close behind at their heels. They might be dismembered, for sale by a butcher. They might be represented…

Controlling Pigs in Countryside and City for Sustainable Medieval Agriculture

Published in Conservation’s Roots: Managing for Sustainability in Preindustrial Europe, 1100-1800, ed. Abigail Dowling and Richard Keyser, 31-49 (Berghahn Books, 2020) Domesticated pigs (Sus scrufa) were an integrated component of medieval food production in both city and countryside. This chapter examines strategies for managing pigs in a sustainable fashion in…

Blood on the butcher’s knife

Blood on the butcher’s knife, In Blood Matters: Blood in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700, ed. Bonnie Lander Johnson and Eleanor Decamp, 224-37 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). The late medieval period has complex and contradictory developments in the thinking about animal blood from butchery. It is both a…

Illuminating Ephemeral Medieval Agricultural History through Manuscript Art

Agricultural History 89, no. 2 (2015), 186-199 There are objects and practices we would not know existed if we relied only on written texts or archeological evidence to piece together medieval agricultural history. These ephemeral aspects of the agricultural past are sometimes, however, captured in art. This essay explores some…

Podcasts in medieval environmental history

I have discussed medieval environmental history as a discipline and my own work in the field in two podcasts: 2013, Umeå Group for Premodern Studies and 2009, Environmental History Resources (scroll down to podcast #28).

The origins and history of medieval wood pastures

in European Wood-pastures in Transition: A Social-ecological Approach, ed. Tibor Hartel and Tobias Plieninger, 55-69 (Routledge, 2014). co-authored with Peter Quelch Rather than historical ecology, which is the study of what the environment was at a particular moment in time, this chapter presents an environmental history, which is the study of…

The enduring landscape of medieval cathedral construction

UGPS Working Paper Series 2014-003, Umeå University, 2014. This paper examines the great building phase of the Anglo-Normans in England from an environmental rather than the more common architectural standpoint. THe construction of massive cathedrals, modern monasteries, and ubiquitous parish churches resulted in environmental consequences for medieval England after the…

Running amuck? Urban swine management in late medieval England

Agricultural History 87 (2013): 429-451. Swine as agricultural products were extremely common in the medieval townscape, but pigs are also notoriously damaging if allowed to run amuck. This article explores how local governments tried to regulate pig rearing as an integrated element in the urban space, arguing that the authorities attempted…

Pigs and pollards – medieval insights for UK wood pasture restoration

Sustainability 5 (2013): 387-399. English wood pastures have become a target for ecological restoration, including the restoration of pollarded trees and grazing animals, although pigs have not been frequently incorporated into wood pasture restoration schemes. Because wood pastures are cultural landscapes, created through the interaction of natural processes and human practices,…

The roots of the English royal forest

in Anglo-Norman Studies 32: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2009, ed. Chris Lewis, 114-128 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010) This paper challenges scholarship on the English forest that focuses on royal hunting. Through an analysis of pre- and post-Conquest Continental charters, the paper first identifies characteristics of areas called forest. It then contrasts…