SC - The horse in medieval agriculture (long)

[Stefan li Rous]

> stefan at texas.net writes:
> << One of the reasons that the horse took a while to begin
>  to be used in agriculture, even after an appropriate collar was invented
>  was that it required a better food supply than the ox. >>
> 
> It appears as if you are taking the basis for your argument back several
> thousands of years. Although such arguments may very well be valid in 2000
> BCE they most certainly would not be valid in the 14th century CE given the
> advanced state of agriculture at that time. 

No. I am not. The time period I am referring to is 500 to 800 AD. I believe
it differs from scholar to scholar and in period from region to region. I'm
a little surprised that since I mentioned the transistion from two field to
three field rotation that since you have been studying period agriculture
that you would think I was talking about 2000 BC or the 14th century. In the
14th century, the Black Plague had a much larger impact on agriculture than
anything else.

Much of my material comes from "The Medieval Machine" by Jean Gimpel, Penguin 
Books, 1976, ISBN 0140045147. At least this is the book I could easily lay
my hands on.

Chapter 2, The Agricultural Revolution. ...until 1931, no academic realized
how inefficent the classical world had been in using animal power and how
inventive the medieval man was in this respect.  ...Noette's theory was that
the Greeks and Romans had never found the correct way to harness horses but
had simply adapted the yoke harness of the ox, with minor modifications, to
the horse. ..As soon as the horse starts to pull, the neck straps pressed
on their jugular veins and windpipes, strangling them and making them throw
back their heads like the horses of the Parthenon... The correct way to
harnessing horses was to build rigid, padded collars... This modern
harness seems to have been used for the first time somewhere in the steppes...
It was introduced into Europe sometime in the eighth century...The earliest
representation of horses working the fields appear in the border of the
Bayeux Tapestry...where there is one pulling a harrow...

The horse, like the tractor that superseded it, was certainly not adopted
everywhere and at the same time. ...It went against tradition: for centuries
Europeans had used only the ox for plowing. ... Horses had to have special
food- oats -and this confronted the farmer with a fundamentally new problem,
as oats had to be specially grown.

...The horse and the ox exert roughly the same pull, but as the horse moves
roughly 50 percent faster...Horses also have greater endurance and can work
two hours longer per day in the fields.

[Here the author does mention the increasing use of period farming managment
treatises that "reveal a very modern approach to agricultural methods and
economics. Thus lending support to some of Ras' contentions]

...The three-field system had many advantages...And as a further advantage,
it allowed farmers who wanted to plow with horses to have a spring crop of
oats, which would feed the horses.

There is more, but I'm tired of typing this in. Perhaps this gives an
idea of what I am basing my statements on.

> I still do not see any evidence
> that a pound of wheat in the middle ages would have been considered more
> desirable than a dozen eggs or a pound of chicken on the dinner table. 

Interesting. I would like to see you get a dozen eggs or a pound of chicken
from one pound of wheat and nothing else. I seriously doubt you could do
this today, at least not for a sustainable time period.

Yes, those at the upper levels of society were much less effected by these
economies. This is the case today. I don't think I ever implied that a
pound of wheat would be preferred to a pound of meat, but that is not the
situation. You can't produce one pound of meat using one pound of wheat.
It is more a question of would you rather have that pound of meat or that
ten pounds of wheat (or whatever the number is). If the amount of wheat
is unlimited, yes you can feed it to the chickens to make meat. However
it wasn't anywhere near unlimited.

Perhaps another example will help. This is from "Cod" by Mark Kurlansky 
which I've been reading. Now, and probably in period, "British and
Icelandic fishermanonly reluctantly catch haddock after their cod
quotas are filled, because cod always brings a better price. Yet 
Icelanders prefer eating haddock and rarely eat cod except dried. Asked
why this is so, Reykjavik chef Ulfar Eysteinsson said "We don't eat
money".

In other words, If you need that wheat (or whatever grain) to make it
through the winter you are not going to feed it to the chickens.

> So far
> your theories just don't apply to an advanced agricultural society. The
> Folger's Library has many manuals specifically written for the farmer and if
> I ever gain access to these manuals, I am certain that they would show what
> is self evident...that medieval and early modern agricultural methods were
> extremely advanced and the primitive ideas oftentimes ascribed to period
> agriculture is in error.

Well, I've already mentioned a fairly large bibliography of period materials
that is available in the Florilegium. Maybe you can use that to get started
and not wait for access to the Folger's Library.

Other folks have worked around problems in accessing collections, some of
these problems caused by fellow SCAers and their reputations. Perhaps
some of the comments in this file in the EDUCATION section might be of
a help in seeing what to do or not do.
museums-msg       (20K) 12/16/99    Experiences in museums by SCA people.

Sigh. This file has sat untouched since 1994. I updated it last Thursday
and decided it might better be in the INFO-SOURCES section. And now I
have a new message to put in it sometime in the future. Anyway, check
in both these sections for the latest version. I will try to get the
updated file online ASAP.
 
> Ras

Stefan
(In the future, I will try to refrain from posting my hypothesises here 
unless I have the referances on hand to back them up)
- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****
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