Mighty warhorses, as richly adorned and armoured as their knightly riders, are an immediately recognisable icon of the medieval period. Until recently, they were understood mainly through analysis of written sources – but what can archaeology add to this picture? Oliver H Creighton, Robert Liddiard, Alan K Outram, Katherine Kanne, Carly Ameen, and Robert Webley explore the key findings of their recently published research.
This reconstruction of a jouster of c.1500, seated on an armoured horse, is on display in the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
For many people, the image of an armoured knight riding into battle or thundering around the tournament ground on a warhorse captures the very essence of the Middle Ages. Valuable, highly trained, and prized for its physical characteristics and temperament, the warhorse was both a weapon that changed the face of battle and a symbol of elite status – the very word ‘chivalry’, meaning the social code by which medieval nobles lived, was derived from the French for ‘horseman’.
All very interesting, but what has any of that got to do with archaeology? Surely medieval knights and their horses are best left to historians interested in the study of battles, warfare, and the lives of the medieval great and good? To prove this wrong, Warhorse: A Medieval Revolution? – an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research project – has pioneered an archaeologically driven approach to the study of warhorses to create new knowledge and afford a more rounded understanding of an iconic animal with uniquely close links to human society.
Analysis of metal-detected artefacts recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme was vital to the team’s work. This ‘heat map’ shows medieval equestrian items from the PAS database – reflecting the density of modern metal-detecting as well as the deposition of artefacts.
The work has changed our understanding not only of the medieval warhorse and its military role but also its broader social, economic, and cultural significance. Medieval horses were bred and bought for more than battle: they were essential in transport, agriculture, and industry. A great range of horse-types existed, and an equine hierarchy mirrored the human social strata of the Middle Ages. At the pinnacle was the ‘destrier’, an elite, prized military mount that could cost 200 or even 300 times as much as a packhorse. Beyond military grade steeds, though, a great variety of different types of horses were bred for different purposes – the swift ‘courser’ used for hunting, the smooth-gaited ‘palfrey’ for everyday riding, and the humble ‘sumpter’, the workhorse of the medieval world.
Spanning AD 800-1550 (the late Saxon period up to and including the reign of Henry VIII), our project aimed to create a new picture of warhorses specifically, but also of medieval horses more generally, including how and where they were bred and trained. The research was run as a collaboration between the University of Exeter and the University of East Anglia, working in partnership with other stakeholders including the Portable Antiquities Scheme and the Royal Armouries, and it embraced the contributions of specialists from many different branches of archaeology and history. In this way, we were able to make use of the widest variety of evidence possible, from biomolecular science to fine art. Most previous studies of medieval warhorses have been undertaken by historians, using documents as their key source of evidence, but we set out to gather and interrogate a much wider range of material, including zooarchaeological data (horse bones and teeth); the physical remains of horse apparel, equipment, and armour; visual depictions of horses in art and sculpture; standing structures such as stables; and the evidence of the historic landscape itself. What can these various strands of evidence tell us, and how, when combined, have they created a more rounded picture of the medieval warhorse than that provided by documents alone?
A selection of medieval horse-related artefacts recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
A: An 11th- or 12th-century copper-alloy stirrup-strap mount from West Yorkshire (SWYOR-37E516 on the PAS database, https://finds.org.uk).
B: A mid- to late 11th-century copper- alloy stirrup strap mount from Wiltshire (WILT-EB951C).
C: A 13th- or 14th-century gilt copper- alloy harness pendant from Wiltshire (NMS-9B4E3A).
D: A 13th-century gilt and enamelled copper-alloy armorial harness pendant from Kent (KENT-71F232).
E: A late 12th- or 13th-century harness pendant with a bell-shaped pendant (one of a pair; the other is missing) from Lincolnshire (LIN-FD3808).
F: A 14th-century gilt copper-alloy harness pendant with a bell, from Norfolk (NMS-022D81).
G: A copper-alloy horse harness strap distributor, dating to the 13th/14th century, from Lincolnshire (NLM-862383).
H: A fragment of a late 11th- or early 12th-century copper-alloy curb bit from Gloucestershire (GLO-61557E)
ILLUMINATING ADORNMENTS
Portable objects associated with medieval horses come in a great variety of forms. Organic items such as leather saddles and fabric ‘caparisons’ (decorative coverings) are exceptionally rare survivals and are found only sporadically in museum collections. Instead, archaeological evidence for warhorse equipment mainly takes the form of metal artefacts. Systematic archaeological surveys of medieval battlefields in England and Wales are unusual and, where they have been conducted, have yielded precious few equestrian items. In order to learn more about the material culture of the medieval warhorse, we must therefore turn to a much broader set of evidence, including artefacts in museums and private collections, but especially data produced by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).
The PAS website (https://finds.org.uk) includes records of almost 1.8 million archaeological finds reported by members of the public, and the Warhorse project partnered with the PAS to make use of the exceptional research value of this resource, compiling a database of more than 14,000 separate medieval horse-related artefacts, mainly metal-detected items. The most familiar and recognisable category of equine artefact is the horseshoe, but there are relatively few of these documented by the PAS. The fact that they are made of iron – a metal typically not targeted by metal detectorists – means that they are instead dwarfed by a huge array of other smaller bits and pieces of horse equipment made of copper alloy. Many of these objects are only recognisable by finds experts, as they formed component parts of larger items of horse gear. A good example is the ‘stirrup-strap mount’ – a cast object that protected the stirrup strap where it looped through the apex of an iron stirrup. Their presence speaks of horses used for riding, and particularly showy decorated forms appear in the archaeological record in the early 11th century, testifying to a rise in horse ostentation in the period immediately before the Norman Conquest.
Also of great research value are ‘harness pendants’, which are similarly diagnostic of riding horses. They hung from the breast-bands of these steeds – often in large numbers, to judge from iconographic sources. Numerous from the 12th century but rare after the 14th century, these were purely decorative rather than utilitarian items, and they tell us about the social cachet of the medieval horse during this period. Although individual examples may seem small and insignificant, the cumulative data from the PAS, which extends to several thousand pendants, provides valuable insights into the distribution and dating of horse gear. Given that many pendants depict heraldic symbols, in some cases it was possible to map the footprints – or ‘hoofprints’ – of noble families too, and distributions of these objects might even tell us about the locations of medieval tournament sites.
This early 12th-century sculpture in St George’s parish church, Fordington, Hampshire, depicts a horse equipped with a row of cross-shaped harness pendants hanging from its breast-band.
EQUINE ARMOUR
Another very distinctive category of equestrian material culture is horse armour, which survives from the early15th century. Components like the shaffron (head covering) survive in museum collections in reasonable numbers, and can provide information on horse size and conformation, particularly for animals bred for battle or the tournament ground. Work carried out by the Warhorse project included an analysis of the earliest piece of surviving medieval horse armour in Europe: the so-called ‘Warwick Shaffron’, held by the Royal Armouries in Leeds. Our study, which was published in the journal Arms & Armour (open access at www.doi.org/10.1080/17416124.2024.2308447) explored evidence of battle damage on the piece, and demonstrated that it would have fitted a horse of above average stature for the period. It was not the largest shaffron measured during the project, however: that title goes to ‘VI.1’, which is also held by the Royal Armouries and was made c.1515 for a horse of the young Henry VIII (see www.royalarmouries.org/collection/object/ object-2627 for more on this artefact).
An Anglo-Scandinavian horse and its equipment, c.1050. Note the non-ferrous embellishments on the bridle, bit, and stirrup.
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CA 420. Read on in the magazine, or click here to read it online at The Past, where you can read all of the Current Archaeology articles in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current World Archaeology , Ancient Egypt , and Military History Matters .