Husbandry Practices as Evidence for Social Structure and Dominance Systems in Rural Society during the Central Middle Ages (Provence, Southern France; 10th-12th centuries AD)

Résumé En

This paper critically revisits three Provençal seigneurial domains from the 10th-12th centuries AD through new zooarchaeological and archaeological data as well as through the work of historians. The contexts studied correspond to four seigneurial, two military and one peasant settlements. The results of the zooarchaeological analyses highlight the predominance of pigs in the elite contexts and that of caprines among the peasants. The data from these different social groups show several other distinctions: herd management (e.g., lamb consumption favoured by the elites), skeletal distributions of caprines (e.g., variable frequency of heads) and pigs (e.g., under-representation of hams in humble contexts). This paper aims to shed light on the social structure and dominance systems between lords and peasants during the beginning of the feudal period, The discussion is mainly oriented towards pig and caprines husbandry which yields new insights into peasant daily-life, peasantry rights and obligations towards lords, territorial management, and the role of peasant communities in the economic development of the Provençal aristocracy. The analysis reveals the mechanisms of dominance and oppression on which the feudal political system was based.