Engendering Debate: Animals and Identity in Anglo-Saxon England

Abstract

WITH THE GROWING popularity of theoretical approaches within medieval archaeology, identity has become a central area of research. Although such studies frequently expound upon the role of the material world in negotiations between individuals and society, there is a tendency to overlook what were fundamen- tal agents within this process: animals. This is especially true of Anglo-Saxon England, where farming determined the daily experiences of most people and the exchange of animals was fundamental to the struc- turing of social relations. Adopting an integrated approach, this paper explores the ways in which differing interactions with animals, in their assorted forms, affected human identities. Particular emphasis is placed on gender perceptions, but the mutual linkages between varying forms of identity necessitate the contextu- alisation of gender against other aspects of social personas. In doing so, the need to adopt a holistic approach to the study of interactions amongst people, and between people and their surroundings, is highlighted.

I would like to thank the University of Nottingham and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for awarding PhD Research Studentships that enabled me to undertake the research upon which this article is partly based. I would also like to thank all zooarchaeologists that provided unpublished data for my thesis, as well as Fay Worley for sending me parts of her PhD thesis, which I have cited in this article. Appreciation is also owed to the two peer reviewers for this paper: James Morris and an anonymous referee, for their insightful and helpful comments. All errors remain my own.

Notes

1 19 Milliners Court, St Albans, Hertfordshire, AL1 3XT. [email protected]

2 Díaz-Andreu 2005, 13; Sørensen 2000, 7.

3 Bitel 2002; Bullough and Campbell 1980; Fell 1984; Hadley 2004; Härke 1997; Herbert 2006; Pomeroy and Zakrzewski 2009; Smith 2005, ch 4.

4 Díaz-Andreu 2005, 16; Hadley 1998a, 8; Sørensen 2000, 7–8.

5 Butler 1993, 12–6.

6 Díaz-Andreu 2005, 22.

7 Sofaer Derevenski 1997, 196; Sørensen 2000, ch 5.

8 Gilchrist 2009, 388.

9 Soderberg 2004, 167–8.

10 Poole forthcoming; Sykes 2009, 355.

11 Pluskowski 2004.

12 Sykes 2009.

13 Ashby 2002.

14 Sykes 2009, 357.

15 Bond and Worley 2006; Richards 1995; Williams 2001; 2005.

16 Lucy 2011, 699.

17 Poole 2011. Data were compiled through personal analysis of animal bones from Bishopstone (East Sussex) and Sedgeford (Norfolk) (Poole 2010; unpublished), combined with data from published excavation reports, along with unpublished data. The latter were accessed through contact with zooarchaeologists, either directly, or through the ZOOARCH mailing list, as well as through access to the library at English Heritage, Fort Cumber- land. In total, 183 different assemblages were of sufficient size for inclusion in this study, of which 37, 47 and 48 assemblages could be attributed specifically to the early, middle and late Anglo-Saxon periods respectively.

18 Butler 1993; Gilchrist 1999, ch 4; Gosden 1999, 147–8.

19 Díaz-Andreu 2005, 14–5.

20 Caldwell 2005, 30.

21 Briefly, weapons and tools (excluding textile equipment) are almost exclusively interred with skeletons sexed as male, while dress ornaments, keys, girdle hangers and textile-working tools tend to be found with skeletons deter- mined to be female (Härke 1997, 132; Hinton 2005, 31; Stoodley 1999).

22 Hadley 2004; Lucy 1997.

23 Walton Rogers 2007, 249.

24 Owen-Crocker 2011, 103. Examples of ‘cross-dressing’ (where grave goods do not match the biological sex) are known from early Anglo-Saxon graves, and have been interpreted by some scholars as possible evidence for the existence of more than two genders in society at this time, perhaps linked to pagan beliefs (Knüsel and Ripley 2000). However, most of these cases are from disturbed graves, double burials or badly documented excavations, which leaves only a very small number of clear instances (Härke 2011; Walton Rogers 2007, 198–9).

25 Smith 2005, 123–4.

26 Bitel 2002, 210.

27 Hadley 1998a.

28 Díaz-Andreu 2005, 41.

29 Yorke 2003, 7.

30 Hadley 1998a, 10.

31 Gilchrist 1999, 77.

32 Appadurai 1981, 494; Hamilakis 1999, 57.

33 Appadurai 1981, 494.

34 Dobney and Jacques 2002; Poole 2011; Sykes 2005, 2006. Settlements referred to as ‘elite’ sites have been attributed to this classification on the basis of interpretation by excavators and other researchers.

35 Hagen 1992, 118–23; Poole 2011.

36 Brown 1988, 220–4; Bynum 1987, 33–41.

37 Härke 1997, 135.

38 Bullough and Campbell 1980.

39 Bullough and Campbell 1980, 320–1.

40 Roberts and Cox 2003, 185–7. Some caution is necessary with these data, however, because the authors do not give figures for the total number of sexed male and female skeletons in their sample. This means that we may not be comparing equal numbers of males and females; if there are more women than men in the overall sample, this may inflate the percentage of women, as opposed to men, that display evidence of cribra orbitalia.

41 Roberts 2009, 314–15.

42 Lemanski 2005, 35–6.

43 Hastorf 1991, 134; Holtzman 2002; McIntosh and Zey 1989.

44 Bynum 1997, 146; Kelly 1997, 451.

45 Meaney 1981, 247.

46 Sykes 2010, 188–9.

47 Fell 1984, 67.

48 Herbert 2006, 17.

49 Bynum 1987, 190; Sommestad 1995, 163; see also ‘Working with animals’ section.

50 Chapman 1997; Hastorf 1991.

51 Hull and O’Connell 2011.

52 Hull and O’Connell 2011, 674–5. The sites with no difference were: Berinsfield and Lechlade (Oxfordshire), Carlton Colville (Suffolk), Alton, Droxford, Portway and Worthy Park (Hampshire) and Bergh Apton, Burgh Castle and South Acre (Norfolk). Sites where men displayed higher nitrogen isotopic values than women were: Caistor-by-Yarmouth, Swaffham and Morningthorpe (Norfolk) and Winnall II (Hampshire). Women had higher nitrogen isotopic values than men in burials from Shavard’s Farm (Hampshire) and Westgarth Gardens (Suffolk).

53 Corr 2001, 21; Marshall et al 2010.

54 Müldner and Richards 2006, 229; Reynard et al 2011.

55 Woolgar et al 2006, 273.

56 Ashby 2002; Sykes 2006, 71.

57 Squires 2007.

58 Cameron 1993, 28, ch 5.

59 Grant 2000; Salisbury 1994, 44.

60 Grant 2000, 154–90.

61 Cameron 1993, 55.

62 Bond 1996; Bond and Worley 2006; McKinley 1994; Meaney 1981; Williams 2005.

63 Bond 1996, 78.

64 Williams 2005, 19.

65 Bond 1996; Bond and Worley 2006; McKinley 1994; Williams 2005.

66 Williams 2005, 27.

67 Ingold 2007.

68 Williams 2003.

69 Meaney 1981.

70 Glosecki 1996, 14.

71 Meaney 1981, 131–6; Geake 1997, 98–9.

72 Blair 2005, 173.

73 Wright 1968, 261.

74 Religion may also have played a role here. One of the suggested reasons behind the shift away from the use of carnivore teeth in graves was due to their pagan connotations, with beaver teeth being seen as more acceptable within a Christian milieu (Meaney 1981, 137).

75 Williams 2005.

76 Bond and Worley 2006, 90. The Spong Hill settlement bones were poorly preserved, which may in part ex- plain the extremely high proportion of cattle; the combined data from other Norfolk sites might provide a better picture of the species proportions on settlement sites. Even so, the proportions of horse are very similar in the combined data and the Spong Hill settlement animal bones.

77 Richards 1987; 1995.

78 Bond and Worley 2006, 92.

79 Worley 2008, 404.

80 Fern 2005; 2007.

81 Ravn 1999.

82 Bond and Worley 2006, 92; Richards 1992, 140.

83 Bond and Worley 2006, 93–4. While exostosis is particularly common in draught animals, it can also be related to age. Within a modern clinical setting, 71% of radiographically detectable lesions in the feet of 803 horses were aged over 9 years old (Fleig and Hertsch 1992, 66, Table 3). All of the horses at Spong Hill were probably over three years old at death, although we cannot ascertain exactly how far beyond this stage these animals were. It is therefore possible that at least some of these pathological lesions are a result of an animal’s age, rather than its working life.

84 Cartmill 1993; Hamilakis 2003; Kent 1989; Sykes 2010.

85 Poole 2011; Sykes 2010.

86 Sykes 2010.

87 Williams 2008.

88 Analysis of animal classifications in Anglo-Saxon England has demonstrated that species distinctions used there broadly correspond with those used within zooarchaeological analysis (Poole 2011, ch 2).

89 Hough 2002, 377–90.

90 Lockwood 2006.

91 Sørenson 2000, 68.

92 Sørensen 2000, 84.

93 Davis 1989.

94 Hurn 2008, 27.

95 Hurn 2008, 37; Kelly 1997, 94.

96 Knight 2005, 5.

97 Gray 1999, 450.

98 Fowler 2002, 266–9.

99 Löfgren 1985.

100 Mullin 1999; Pollard 2006, 135.

101 Sørensen 2000, 63.

102 Gilchrist 1999, 31.

103 Wright 1991, 200–1.

104 Bitel 1996, 124; Kelly 1997, 451.

105 Pomeroy and Zakrzewski 2009.

106 Bitel 2002, 204.

107 Kelly 1997, 448; Smith 2005, 122.

108 Hinton 2005, 31.

109 Fell 1984, 39–41; Gilchrist 1999, 50–1; Harrington 2008.

110 Lemanski 2005, 36–7.

111 Robertson 1925, 73.

112 Jenkins 1990, 45–6.

113 Jochens 1995, 120.

114 Vinogradoff 1908, 467.

115 Gidney 2009; Goldberg 1992, 105, 139; Woolgar 2006, pl 7·1.

116 Oschinsky 1971, 287–9, 425, 435.

117 Oschinsky 1971, 425.

118 Crossley-Holland 1999, 222.

119 Faith 1997, 65; Ruffing 1994, 60–1.

120 Bitel 2002, 193; Wyatt 2009, ch 3.

121 Murdock and Provost 1973; Sommestad 1995.

122 Gilchrist 1999, 38–40; Hadley and Moore 1998, 22–3.

123 Simonton 1998, 31, 122; Sommestad 1995, 163.

124 Bynum 1997, 150.

125 Wangui 2008, 370.

126 Ingold 1996.

127 Mlekiž 2007.

128 Hemsworth and Coleman 1998; Hemsworth 2003.

129 Armstrong Oma 2010, 182; Bock et al 2007, 112; Crate 2008.

130 Myrdal 2008, 64.

131 O’Connor 2007, 9.

132 Head and Atchison 2009.

133 Mullin 1999.