Urban Animals: Human-Poultry Relationships in Later Post-Medieval Belfast

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Apr 2016

Live animals were a ubiquitous feature of post-medieval cities and provided a variety of products to a broad cross-section of society. Poultry species were portable and accessible to people of modest means. Yet, the quotidian presence of poultry contrasts with the lack of attention to urban animal husbandry. Zooarchaeological data from the faunal assemblage from St. Anne’s Square, a 0.77 ha seventeenth to early twentieth-century site in Belfast, combined with historical legislation, court records, and news sheets held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland reveal the complexity of and contradictions implicit in poultry-human relationships in Belfast and nearby areas.

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Urban Animals: Human-Poultry Relationships in Later Post-Medieval Belfast

Urban Animals: Human-Poultry Relationships in Later Post-Medieval Belfast B. Tyr Fothergill 0 1 0 School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester , University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH , UK 1 B. Tyr Fothergill Live animals were a ubiquitous feature of post-medieval cities and provided a variety of products to a broad cross-section of society. Poultry species were portable and accessible to people of modest means. Yet, the quotidian presence of poultry contrasts with the lack of attention to urban animal husbandry. Zooarchaeological data from the faunal assemblage from St. Anne's Square, a 0.77 ha seventeenth to early twentieth-century site in Belfast, combined with historical legislation, court records, and news sheets held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland reveal the complexity of and contradictions implicit in poultry-human relationships in Belfast and nearby areas. Animal husbandry; Urban; Women's work; Poultry; Cock-fighting - Beyond these themes, however, animals have shaped the urban experience both historically and archaeologically; they were of critical importance to the many-stranded economic success of Belfast. Yet, they and their roles have escaped investigation apart from bland acknowledgement as producers of waste, agents of disease, or shadowy features of the backdrop against which history happened. Certain species (namely pigs and poultry) were affordable to many city-dwellers and husbanded in these environments until well into the twentieth century, though urban pig-keeping was gradually legislated out of permissibility over time and few traces of poultry-rearing exist from c. 1920 onward. These Bhousehold animals^ are easily overlooked and their maintenance often perceived as women’s work, which may have made them less intriguing subjects for historical writing (Thirsk 2006, p.262; Sayer 2013) . Even economic histories of the keeping, movement, slaughter, processing, and sale of valuable and culturally important large ungulates such as horses and cattle remain obscure, heavily overshadowed by treatises on specific industries such as linen production and shipbuilding. An archaeological perspective offers a distinctive way of examining husbandry methods and other past relations between humans and Bhousehold^ domesticates in urban environments. Whilst brief interpretations based upon skeletal element measurements, species ratios, mortality profiles and population structure data collected at the time of primary analysis have clear utility with regard to understanding breeding, population management, and slaughtering practices, human perceptions of urban domesticates and other facets of their husbandry are not typically discussed from an archaeological perspective. These include subjects such as housing and space; transport and control of movement; waste management; grooming, hygiene, and medical treatment; and the harvesting, gathering, and sale of products. It is also important to recognise that different social groups in an urban environment will approach animal husbandry in ways which are not necessarily consistent or compatible with one another. Although the case of each species and city will be different, attempts to go beyond basic interpretations of animals raised in urban environments can offer enticing details of past relationships between humans and other animals beyond aspects of population and presence. In this paper, I examine the roles of poultry in Belfast by approaching the concept of husbandry as a suite of social practices that included a range of actors and interactions rather than a different way of framing exploitation or production. Poultry-human relationships can be detected in the histories of common pastimes, the urban economy, management of space, hygiene and sanitation, gender, and education; it is within these themes that aspects of husbandry emerge. Zooarchaeological reports exist for a number of sites across Ulster and Northern Ireland (see Hamlin and Lynn 1988; Ó Baoill 2011) , and although interpretations for the roles of large mammals, especially cattle and horses, are regularly provided, avian bone is not routinely discussed (or even analysed, in some cases). This is especially evident in reports from urban contexts in the post-medieval period, despite the fact that poultry husbandry would have been feasible in a far greater range of circumstances than horse or cattle husbandry. Furthermore, poultry-keeping had the potential to empower women across the socioeconomic spectrum and contribute to the financial stability of urban households and neighbourhoods during times of social upheaval. Several issues are responsible for the lack of archaeological attention; generally, these include perception, identification, and recovery. Post-medieval faunal assemblages are perceived as less valuable than those from other periods and are not prioritised for analysis or retention (Thomas 2009); identifying bird remains often requires (...truncated)


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B. Tyr Fothergill. Urban Animals: Human-Poultry Relationships in Later Post-Medieval Belfast, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2017, pp. 107-133, Volume 21, Issue 1, DOI: 10.1007/s10761-016-0331-z