DeepCattle · The Deep History of Commercial Cattle Farming in Europe, c.1240-1840 AD

The production of beef and dairy today is a major business with a huge global footprint, yet the historical origins of this phenomenon remain unclear. DeepCattle aims to uncover the emergence of commercial cattle farming by looking at Europe from c.1240 to 1840 AD. It asks when and how more intensive, market-focused cattle farming developed, fuelling urban growth and trade, and it reveals its social and environmental consequences for rural regions over time. This will be achieved through a novel landscape approach. There will be 3 primary case studies in Ireland, Scotland and Sweden and 2 secondary case studies in the north-west Alps and Hungarian Plain, the latter two acting as a control for findings in northern Europe. One strand of work will reconstruct the cattle- and land-management practices that made production possible and examine social change in communities using historic manuscripts and maps, remote sensing, archaeological fieldwork and GIS. A second strand will identify the expansion of cattle grazing and its impacts on biodiversity through pollen analysis and sedimentary DNA. A third will trace the movement of cattle and dairy out of these areas to cities using landscape analysis, economic history data and urban excavation reports. The project opens a new avenue of study in global environmental history, highlighting the pre-industrial roots of capitalist meat and dairy production. In doing so, it forces a rethink of economic change in Europe in the medieval-to-modern transition. It foregrounds the costs of urban growth and consumption for rural communities and environments and reveals the contingency of such growth on the actions of people at the ‘periphery’, everyday populations who had to navigate not only market demand but also local social structures, terrain and climate. The PI, Eugene Costello, is ideally placed to lead this work given his expertise in pastoralism and skills in archaeology, historical ecology and multi-lingual historical research.