Environmental Archaeology. The journal of human palaeoecology

Volume 1 Published May 1998

Most of the papers in this volume were presented to a session on 'The Archaeology of Fodder' at the Easter 1995 meeting of the Association of Environmental Archaeology in Sheffield. That session and the present volume were conceived of for two related reasons. First, the feeding of livestock is a central but neglected feature of Old World farming economies. Secondly, growing interest in this topic is now being shown from an impressively broad range of specialisms within environmental archaeology.

One of the defining characteristics of Old World farming is the interdependence between crop and livestock husbandry. Livestock contribute manure for fertilising fields and gardens, labour for tillage, transport for crop products and by-products, fuel for fires and a means of converting crop by-products and surpluses into a more useful form. Conversely, fodder crops and the by-products of food crops often make a significant contribution to maintaining livestock. In recent centuries, shortage of fodder or pasture has often been a major constraint on the scale or productivity of Old World animal husbandry, and this in turn has often imposed constraints on crop husbandry and hence on the status or even survival of mixed farming households. As a result, the production and control of fodder and pasture have often played a major role in shaping farming practices, cultural landscapes and human societies. Contributors to this volume draw on ethnographic, historical and archaeological sources to address such issues. Palmer explores the ways in which fodder provision influences decision making by arable farmers in contemporary Jordan, while Jones shows how a flexible boundary between food and fodder crops helps to cushion recent Greek farmers against crop failure. Foxhall uses classical writers to document the use of agricultural residues as fodder in the early historical Mediterranean, while Forbes argues that the reliance of contemporary Greek farmers on crop by-products and fallow grazing, rather than fodder crops, provides an illuminating model for pre-industrial agriculture in temperate Europe. Haas et al. and Halstead et al. describe rare survivals of the harvesting of leafy hay from deciduous trees in the highlands of Europe, while Amorosi et al. use a wide range of sources to consider the vital role of hay in the farming economies of the Norse North Atlantic. Williamson draws on historical evidence to reinterpret the role of rotations including fodder crops in the 'agricultural revolution' of post-medieval England.

Contributions from environmental archaeology include both ethnoarchaeological studies designed to refine methodology (Anderson and Ertug-Yaras; Charles; Halstead et al.; Jones; Mainland; Smith) and analyses of ancient biological samples (Amorosi et al.; Charles; Haas et al.; Hall and Kenward; Karg). These studies consider a wide range of ancient and modern biological evidence, including pollen (Halstead et al.; Karg), seeds and other plant macrofossils (Amorosi et al.; Anderson and Ertug-Yaras; Charles; Haas et al.; Hall and Kenward; Jones; Karg), tree rings (Haas et al.; Halstead et al.; Karg), insects (Amorosi et al.; Hall and Kenward; Smith), bones (Amorosi et al.), dental microwear (Mainland) and animal dung (Anderson and Ertug-Yaras; Charles; Hall and Kenward; Karg). They also override traditional distinctions between economic and environmental, on-site and off-site, animal and plant, macroscopic and microscopic studies. More important, these contributions underline the complementary nature of different specialisms and different classes of evidence: macro- and microscopic plant remains may allow recognition of different types (and different seasons) of fodder; 'barn beetles' may indicate whether stored or fresh fodder was used; dental microwear may reveal dietary distinctions between animals of different species, age and sex; off-site palynology and archaeological survey may clarify the impact of fodder provision on landscape change and social differentiation.

The title of the 1995 AEA session was misleading in that it was restricted neither to archaeology nor to fodder. The former error has been corrected in the title of this volume, but the latter is retained for the sake of brevity and simplicity. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines 'fodder' as 'dried food, hay, straw, etc., for stall-feeding cattle', but the papers which follow are not only concerned with cattle nor with stall-feeding nor even with dried food. Some contributors are principally concerned with animal food grown or harvested with human intervention, but for others this restriction too would be unhelpful. As several contributors make clear, the provision of fodder cannot be understood without considering the availability of pasture (see, in particular, the discussion by Forbes). Moreover, the diversity of human intervention in animal feeding regimes (e.g. in creating fallow grazing or 'floated' meadows) may be difficult to accommodate within such a simple fodder/pasture dichotomy. The solution adopted in this volume is pragmatic and flexible: contributors have been free to define their interest in the feeding of animals as narrowly or as broadly as suits their particular purposes.

This volume by no means exhausts the range of issues to which the feeding of livestock is significant nor the range of specialisms within environmental archaeology which may be applied to their investigation. It is hoped that the volume will serve to heighten awareness of, and participation in, the archaeological and historical study of animal feeding habits.