Time for a change? Investigating shifts in agricultural economies and food in southern-central Norway (11th -16th c. AD)

Abstract

Cattle and, to a lesser extent, sheep/goat and pigs, were crucial components of Norway’s socio-cultural and economic dynamics in the Middle Ages. Zooarchaeological analyses of faunal samples from different urban sites reveal that changes in cattle husbandry practices occurred in Norway over the medieval period, and especially in its early phases. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of medieval Oslo, where an in-depth zooarchaeological study provides the first comprehensive review of cattle husbandry strategies. In the first centuries of the medieval period (11th -mid 12th c. AD), cattle were mainly raised for milk and meat production, while fewer young and more numerous older individuals, most of which probably oxen, were present from mid 12th -13th c. AD onwards. This hypothesis is supported by biometrical analyses of cattle postcranial bones, indicating changes in the sexual composition of cattle herds over time. Therefore, from ca. mid 12th -13th c. AD onward, cattle seem to have been more used for ploughing and, only once old, to have been culled for their meat. In turn, this evidence suggests that more arable lands had to be ploughed, especially in eastern and central Norway. Here, demographic growth and settlement expansion would have led to an increase in food demand; at the same time, more favourable climatic conditions might have contributed to an increase in the availability of arable fields. This article suggests that medieval Norwegian farming was not static as historically thought, but rather connected to wider-scale agricultural innovations characterising other parts of medieval Europe.