Historical management of equine resources in France from the Iron Age to the Modern Period: a cross disciplinary approach La gestion des équidés en France de l’âge du fer à l’époque moderne : une approche inter-disciplinaire
Fiche du document
2022
- ISIDORE Id: 10670/1.9d7222...
- hal: hal-05023241
- doi: 10.4000/bmsap.8460
Ce document est lié à :
info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.4000/bmsap.8460
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/
Mots-clés
-bio]Sujets proches
AdministrationCiter ce document
Pierre Clavel et al., « La gestion des équidés en France de l’âge du fer à l’époque moderne : une approche inter-disciplinaire », HALSHS : archive ouverte en Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société, ID : 10.4000/bmsap.8460
Métriques
Partage / Export
Résumé
Donkeys, horses and their mule hybrids have had a far-reaching impact on human history since they have been domesticated several millennia ago. These animals have indeed provided many economic, social and cultural resources that fueled both agricultural and economic development, war making and cultural exchange. Gaining a full understanding of the respective contributions of the different equine species to past societies remains, however, difficult due to limitations in our capacity to properly identify, based on morphometric data alone, archaeological remains that are often incomplete and fragmented. We have, thus, leveraged state-of-the-art technologies in ancient DNA research and Geometric Morphometric Methods (GMM), in order to reconstruct 2,500 years of management strategies of equine resources in France. Our analysis includes a total of 890 remains from 134 archaeological sites and illuminates changing management practices through time and according to the socio-cultural context. In particular, our work reveals the Roman Period as the golden age for mule breeding and a growing importance of donkeys during the whole Middle Ages. We also identify donkey specimens of extremely large size, suggesting a wider phenotypic range in the past for the species than in the present day, potentially reflecting their use for different purpose. Additionally, we found strong differences between cities and rural environments across all time periods, in which horse mares were largely absent from cities to maintain stock production and horse males were preferred for hard-working conditions and sacrificial rituals. While our work contributed to fill important gaps in our understanding of equine management in France, further GMM and DNA analyses at the whole-genome scale will be necessary to retrace both trade and exchange patterns and possibly fluctuating preferences for specific morpho-anatomical and/or performance traits.
