Nýjar rannsóknir í fornleifafræði: Helene Benkert

Helene Benkert heldur fyrirlesturinn „The Great Horse? Equine stature and morphology in the European Middle Ages“ í fyrirlestraröðinni Nýjar rannsóknir í íslenskri fornleifafræði. 

Fyrirlesturinn verður haldinn í stofu 023 í Veröld - húsi Vigdísar miðvikudaginn 17. apríl kl. 12:00. Einnig verður hægt að fylgjast með í streymi á Zoom. 

Nýjar rannsóknir í íslenskri fornleifafræði er fyrirlestraröð Félags fornleifafræðinga, námsbrautar í fornleifafræði við HÍ og Þjóðminjasafns Íslands. Smellið hér til að kynna ykkur dagskrá vormisseris 2024.

Um fyrirlesturinn

The horse has shaped the human world for many millennia, from before its domestication until today. During the Middle Ages, horses, and warhorses in particular, rose to the forefront of society, as weapons, companions, labourers and status symbols. Horse breeding became a vast, specialised industry and the horse trade flourished across Europe and beyond. The medieval warhorse still enjoys high popularity in contemporary media and amongst the general public, while it has been a bit neglected in academic circles until very recently.

But what did these horses actually look like? Zooarchaeology has a unique potential to investigate this question as it examines the animals’ physical remains through various scientific techniques. This lecture presents some results from my PhD research, showcasing how horse stature and morphology changed between the 5th to the 16th centuries in Europe. I also draw on findings from the recently completed Warhorse Project, a large-scale, interdisciplinary study which explored the development of medieval warhorses from a variety of different angles, including isotopic and genetic analyses, written sources, zooarchaeology, material culture and landscape archaeology.