The Wandering Herd: The Medieval Cattle Economy of South-east England

Description: Parts of medieval Kent, particularly the North Downs and North Kent Plain, were home to specialised cattle ranches known as vaccaries. They emerged during the early medieval period when they appear to have been the preserve of Kentish royalty. Dr. Andy Margetts gave a talk to the KAS introducing the key findings of a new book entitled The Wandering Herd. The author hopes this study will change ingrained perceptions regarding the nature of pastoralism within South-East England over the longue durée of the medieval period. It shows the importance of cattle within the evolution of the area’s society, settlement and landscape Support the Kent Archaeological Society www.kentarchaeology.org.uk www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/join-kas - Free for students/ family and individual rates/ group rates www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/news/events General volunteering and communications-based volunteering communications@kentarchaeology.org.uk volunteering for specific topics: CAD, illustration and other computer drawing experience - keith.parfitt@kentarchaeology.org.uk Surveying including geopphysics, gnss and drones richar.taylor@kentarchaeology.org.uk palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic periods - lithics@kentarchaeology.org.uk Creating a pottery reference collection for Kent - pottery@kentarchaeology.org.uk Identifying pottery and other ceramics in existing collections for inclusion in the reference = ceramics@kentarchaeology.org.uk

Transcript: [Music] good evening everyone my name is fred bertbeck and i'm presenting tonight's talk um from the kent archaeological society thanks to everyone for joining for this and hope you enjoy it um the kent archaeological society have been running quite a few of these talks we have trustee talks and uh some guest presenters tonight we've got uh andy margetts presenting on his subject which is um the wandering herd which is the medieval cattle economy of south east england and i hope you enjoy it and you can support the kas by joining and you can support us by following our facebook page and following us on social media and interacting with us on social media as well all these talks are being recorded and they're available shortly afterwards on our youtube channel and if you need to contact anyone at the ks about our communications about the the bulletins that have been produced recently about the magazines or about any of the communications that we have with the um members of the society and beyond then you can contact me and you can do so at communications at kent uk now um andy has very kindly given his time up tonight to talk to us and um he's completed his phd in medieval pastoralism at the university of exeter in 2020 he currently works as a post-excavation manager at archaeology southeast which is the institute of archaeology at ucl he's written several articles and two books on medieval archaeology and andy has excavated widely in kent including medieval farmstead sites on the isle of sheppy at the medieval hospital submarines and offspring and the roman vickers settlement at richborough so um we're delighted that andy could join us tonight and um it's really interesting uh topic that he's gonna be talking on something i don't very little about so i'll um without further ado pass you over to um andy markets and welcome andy well thanks very much fred and uh good evening everybody um my aim today is to introduce some of the key findings of a new book entitled the wandering herd i want to challenge ingrained perceptions regarding the nature of pastoralism within southeast england over the long duration of the medieval period i also want to show the importance of cattle within the evolution of the area society settlement and landscape as a driver of colonisation and as a facilitator of both seasonal and permanent exploitation of so-called marginal areas cattle husbandry played a central role in the evolution of kent's historic landscape the work involved a multi-disciplinary study of the cattle economy during the middle ages it examined aspects of the historic landscape such as place names and medieval roads as well as documentary evidence and archaeological remains the study area really needs no introduction and comprise the modern counties of kent surrey and east and west sussex it is an area of reasonably varied topography with semi-upland landscapes encompassing the broad sweep of the north and south downs as well as the central high wield variations in geology and topography as well as cultural and economic factors has led to the definition of a number of character areas or payee these zones transcend arbitrary administrative boundaries and have provided a real framework for the study of the southeast historic landscape to briefly summarize these payee which together make up the region we begin with the central core of the predominantly sandstone high wheeled this is surrounded by the heavily wooded clay vale of the low wheeled which in turn is encompassed by the poor sandy source of the green sand bridge these areas lie between the opposing chalk escarpments of the north and south downs to the east we have the coastal reclaimed wetlands of romney marsh and the pevensy levels and in the south the rich arable area of the sussex coastal plain astride the upper thames we have the london or thames basin and then further down the river the diverse landscape of the north kent plain and thames estuary so what are our current perceptions of the medieval pastoral economy in this part of england chances are the first thing that will spring to mind is the pasturing of sheep on the dry chalk hills or perhaps even on the coastal wetlands of romney marsh or the pevensy levels or is it the seasonal pannage of pigs in the famous swine dens of the kentish world and parts of sussex an aspect that might not be so apparent is the pasturing of cattle but as i hope to show these animals have played a fundamental role in the shaping of the region their influence extends throughout the medieval period and beyond prior to my new study the only areas to receive any in-depth investigation of large-scale medieval cattle husbandry have been dartmoor and parts of northern england areas of blackbuncher lancashire and cumbria have been shown by angus winchester to be associated with great specialized cattle ranches known as bakeries these establishments have been seen as a fundamental part of medieval land use and settlement evolution particularly in areas designated forest or chase factories were comprised of least pasture performing a number of functions they sometimes acted as dairies producing milk butter and cheese or as breeders of draft oxen necessary for arable agriculture they also comprised ranches producing fat stock necessary to feed a burgeoning urban population factories possessed an enclosed plot of wood and meadow as well as an expanse of open grazing that included stock funnels and driftways allowing livestock to move between site and areas of rough pasture factory enclosures included several dwellings and farm buildings clustered together these comprise the dwelling for the cow keeper and his family the cow house and possibly a house for hay and calves where they have been recorded the great lay and ecclesiastical backers are often surrounded by large banks and ditches or in stone used in areas factory walls the slide shows an example of the valkyrie walling near white collar in jordan forest lancashire white collar comes from the old english wick and allah meaning dairy farm amongst the older trees factories were key elements in the articulation of the landscape often being placed on the slopes of well-watered rising land so that they could exploit open upland pasture although their occurrence has mainly been noted in wild northern uplands rather than the lowlands of southern england documentary evidence for these establishments does exist valkyries are recorded from southern england since at least the time of doomsday this entry for spartial in the veil of the white horse tells of us of a dairy of acharya which produced six ways of cheese but buckland bishop osborne had a dairy a wicker producing 10 ways of cheese in the southeast there are tantalizing indications that backery establishments or their equivalent existed a long time prior to the conquest here i want to introduce the surrey example of cowshot manor cowshot is located in an area of extensive heathland and historic mapping showed it to be surrounded by an oval or arc shaped enclosure separating it from the open heath beyond now you have to forgive my pronunciation of old english council is named kushitshagan in a 7th century charter the name element haagen or hagen means an enclosure and it's part of a number of related words pertaining to enclosures fences and hedges cowshot mannering scenes comprised an enclosure in a landscape of well-watered open pasture for it is like it's connected with the nearby cattle name of cal moore this is mentioned in the same 7th century charter to turn to kenshi's examples archbishop wolford's high payment for attractive marshland between favichrom creek and graveny known as the king's cow land may be indicative of cattle dairies in a wetland context the payment is recorded in an early 9th century anglo-saxon charter which also refers to the purchase of an estate that included land known in latin as campus almantorum and in english as hariba lee river is the old english for cattle and these records show that cattle pasture may have been more important in the early medieval south east and is immediately obvious and that there was a kentish royal interest in the pasturing of cows one of the key characteristics of a vaccine site is an oval enclosure when a certain number of criteria come together it's possible to actually discern factory sites here we have the example of shellwood veteran on ashdown forest in sussex a valkyrie that was owned by the augustinian monks of mickland priory and featured a noble enclosure and a bakery place name at the battery on the surrey sussex border the medieval cattle enterprise was again characterized by noble enclosure one was that was later converted into a hunting park for deer again it is associated with a factory name but other place name indicators of cattle establishments also exist such as wick stool and stock elements that we'll return to later a report of inquisition within the canterbury cathedral archives explicitly mentions the presence of a kentish factory here we can see that the tenants of the hundred of marden should repair the house of a cow pasture a bacharia called cow house in the manner of milton regis the tenants of martin should repair the park called summerhouse and should make cheese butter and dairy products for the sergeant calling the day along with oval enclosures and access to open pasture the possession of a cow house is one of the key defining features of a bakery site there are often substantial affairs here we can see that just part of the cow house at milton regis measured 18 feet in width and was 48 feet long so factories are clearly traceable through documentary and toponymic evidence as well as by as well as the particular landscape forms they took and the buildings they possessed but where might we expect factories to be located the study explored the available medieval animal bone assemblages from the different payees of the southeast this included some of the largest and most up-to-date bonus embraces from the region analysis was undertaken in relation to size status and time frame the assemblages were also compared to national data for the three major domesticates that is pigs sheeple goats and cattle so what did we find out sheep or cattle dominated the regional livestock economies to greater or lesser extents data was explored throughout the medieval period but here i'd just like to focus on the results for the 8th to the earlier 14th century this was the time characterized by the developed market economy and a suite of agrarian changes brought about by the so-called long eighth century from the examination of the animal bonus sandwiches it's possible to suggest that cattle were an important livestock species throughout the southeast but particularly so in certain landscapes the slide gives us a reasonably accurate picture of where cattle as opposed to sheep country lay these divergences are inextricably linked to underlying environmental factors which despite not dictating the keeping of certain livestock types nonetheless influenced medieval husbandry choices in kent robbie marsh and parts of the north kent plain were exploited for their suitability for sheep while the source and hydrology of the high wield encouraged the keeping of cattle the dry light saws of the northbounds were extensively used for the pasturing of sheep whilst the well-watered heavy clay lands of the low wheeled were considered cattle country what this figure serves to emphasize is how important cattle were in terms of the geographical area covered is the core area of the wheeled and those lands that bordered the thames valley where capital were favored sheep dominated a smaller land mass although these areas have been historically considered to be amongst the most densely settled and economically advanced within the region so it is the area of the world and parts of the north kent plain where we can expect to find cattle establishments certainly the marshes and creeks on the border of the swale have been previously mentioned as cattle pasture the medieval agricultural writer walter of henley tells us of the value that marshland pasture held for the grazing of cattle he stated that two cows fed on salt marsh would yield the same a way of cheese and half a gallon of butter as free cows fed on wood pasture stubbles or meadow after it had been cut but woodland and in particular wood pasture was one of the most abundant grazing resources available to medieval husbandmen the role of wood pasture and the rights and customs attached to it were a fundamental influence to the evolution of settlement in kent and the wider south east although pastoral exploitation of the woodland resource is often investigated through the pannage of swine wood pasture for cattle also played an important role in the early agrarian economy tracing this economy using solely documentary evidence is however extremely difficult nevertheless woodland cattle pasture is mentioned in a number of pre-conquest documents in ada-05 covford king of kent granted river lee or the cattle glades near petum in the buckholt forest to the archbishop of canterbury and in ad724 minster was granted a right to pasture in bleen buckholt and oxny the ox enclosure these examples are a rarity and the importance of wood pasture for cattle has usually relied on other forms of evidence such as place names rather than purely documentary investigation alan everett has viewed down the names incorporating stall and steel as being indicative although not exclusively so of woodland backeries these cast pastures may have been characteristic of the downland economy before and for a time after the conquest everett cited a number of places including statusfield above charring my store in charlton dunstall in shoreham and dunstall in lenham as certain cattle establishments or dairy farms his inclusion of tunstall near milton in this group of names can be commended in the light of the documentary evidence associated with the manner of milton regis explored previously and the fact that tunstall names have been seen by angus winchester in the north of england as being used to specifically denote factory size the correspondence of stool and steel names with valkyries may not always be straightforward as other meanings such as home school are also possible this confusion is compounded by the prevalence of minor settlements known as four stalls in kent and east sussex within kent forestal is virtually confined to the pastoral areas of the county particularly to the world and the net and the downs while it may have latterly taken on the connotation of the farm green it seems to have originally indicated a stool or standing place in front of a farmhouse possibly one where cows were bought to be knelt beer for store when ellen was taken by everett to mean either a pasture full store or a stool in front of a buyer or cattle shed likewise he took merchant for stall in an area of riverine pasture to denote a subordinate dairy farm during excavations at the hayworth in west sussex we found evidence of a stall in front of the substantial cow house to turn to stock names such places may have been equivalent to the seasonal shieldings of the north and west of britain from the southern english context low-lying well-watered standing places for cattle were termed in the early medieval period stock these were used by herdsmen during the summer who drove their cattle from a parent ville often therefore the pastures came to be named as a stock of a particular original settlement as in cow stock in cornwall as a stock of callington plimstock in devon as the stock of plimpton and bazin stoke in hampshire as a stock of basing it is likely that such stock names originated as parts of wider estates and only later would they become outlying dairy or cattle farms the stocks of sussex and surrey seem to be of early derivation as the majority are of clear pre-conquest origin of the kentish stocks the most prominent group is to be found in the area near milton regis these include woodstock pit stock bistock pisstock and stockbree milton regis has access to the rich marshall and pasture of north kent and it seems that wetland pastures were also related to the stocks of surrey and sussex so armed with our corpus of information about medieval valkyries can we actually trace the backery of milton regis on the ground by examining the os first edition map we can begin to populate the area around milton regis with likely backery elements so we have the raw head settlement of milton register itself this is located near to a creek that feeds into the swale prior to reclamation this creek would have been surrounded by open marshland pasture these pastures are sandwiched between the swale and the north downs articulating these landscapes together are a number of north east to southwest orientated droveways it's possible to discern two oval enclosures straddling the dip slope of the downs on the north kent plain is the probable traces of the main factory enclosure at tunstall to the west is a detached woodland enclosure we have our stock place names locations that probably represent outlying dairy farms and milstead or milk in place the valkyrie at tunstall clearly exploited the marshes around the swale for its summer grazing the environment facilitating the high milk yields allowing the making of cows cheese and butter the woodlands of the north bounds would have been exploited during those periods of the year when the marshes were flooded and although the grazing was not as rich here as on the marshes it was abundant and cheap at this period cattle dairies were extravagant affairs the ewe and the she-goat were the more common dairy animal though on improved medieval stock it's likely to have been able to make better use of rough pasture and browse than modern cattle breeds dairies would have still required large quantities of hay to sea herds through the winter at doomsday it was the kentish river valleys and the area to the north of romney marsh where the largest acreage of meadow could be found nevertheless wood woodland resources and in particular pollard or tree hay could provide alternative feed when other fodder was scarce branches from trees in leaf were cut in the peak of the growing season and stored for winter feed the branches were typically harvested during the late summer as a ruminant cows were able to extract more nutrition from lesser quality fodder and beech ash elm holly and ivy were all cut to feed cattle over the winter months despite its importance to the dairy economy grass does not always constitute the preferred food of cattle browse and coarse weeds can make up a significant part of the animal's diet something capitalized on the wheeled and farmer by the grazing of hedges and shores on average modern cattle breeze pastured in woodland can consume between approximately six kilograms and eight kilograms of foraged brows per day and it's probable that unimproved medieval stock could make even more use of this poor quality feed indeed my research shows the woodland pasture for cattle played a much more prominent role in the early agrarian economy of the southeast than we once supposed cattle were an important feature of the woodland economy of kent and those regions of the south east that experienced so-called secondary settlement nevertheless both pigs and cattle required careful management in order to benefit from the very their various advantages and so as not to disrupt the sensitive ecology of the forest cattle were pastured in coppis woodland once the stalls had grown above browsing height and pigs were turned out in the autumn to feed on mast the value of coppice depended on the management cycle but generally improved grazing by opening up the canopy providing space and light to the woodland floor but cattle were destructive to new growth and would be confined to plots of around five to seven years old pig grazing could be beneficial prior to stocking in woodlands by clearing up the autumn a corn crop which if consumed in quantity by cows can cause birth defects and even death environmental evidence from hayworth in sussex has shown that oak may have been deliberately reduced by the combined feeding of pigs and cattle as well as careful selection by people this alternate grazing of cattle and pigs was valuable in other ways too as it assisted woodland regeneration this was achieved in three ways first by a planting and encouragement of mass-bearing trees secondly by the loosening of the soil through the rooting activities of swine which creates ideal germination conditions for saplings and thirdly by the trampling of cattle which can help reduce bracken cover the destination of the early medieval pig herder was the anglo-saxon den so commonly incisionalistically interpreted as a pasture for swine where the den placed names was sometimes prefixed with cattle elements cautiously indicating that seasonal pasturing of cattle may have been an equally important function of the dens early use by the time of doomsday the large swine renders recorded for oxford and rotherham in kent and south mauling in sussex employ a tenants herd of 1500 to 2000 swine such large numbers were would have been further swirled by the peaks of the domain the difficulties of herding pigs the conflation of panage with transhumans and the distance between some outlying pastures and their parents settlements has led to a questioning of our understanding of the element den and how valid use of seasonal wood pastures for swine really was some authorities have played down the national importance of panic as a method of livestock production oliver rackham for instance has stated how the customs were often jocular fanciful or even deliberately prohibitive and that to breed animals with the aim of utilizing such an unpredictable resource as a mass crop was completely impractical i am in no way arguing that the seasonal pannage of swine was not of great importance in kent but merely that it has sometimes overshadowed the rest of the woodland pastoral economy my research shows that the wild and punish season was preceded by a period of cattle summering the fact that wild and place names such as milk said summer den and summer leads have been linked to a phase of early medieval dairying strengthen the case for the yearly movement of cattle the value placed on these seasonal sites is testified by the distance covered in the annual journey to the commons as the medieval period progressed however swine may have gradually decreased in prominence as cattle's importance grew as large as waves of the world were turned over to settled agriculture and increased the starting aid into the old remnants of the forest the seasonal movement of swine went into decline it can be postulated too that summary of cattle would have been curtailed although this species had by this time become essential to the settled wildern farmer on sufficiently documented estates the method of production adopted by these pioneers was a form of convertible husbandry or infield outfield a relatively small acreage near the main barns was generously manured and almost permanently cropped with a mixture of either wheat oats or leguminous crops such as beans cattle to the wildern farmer have become what sheep were to the downsman a walking source of manure that facilitated an arable crop not only that but prior to mechanization the sussex ox was the only beast capable of ploughing the intractable world and clays so i hope i've convinced you that cattle were a far more important livestock type in medieval kent than the previous studies focused on sheep and swine would have us realize i hope i've repopulated the medieval woods of your imagination with the lowering of cattle but the relevance of this study does not stop in the past how we shape our prospective environment can be informed by bygone practice as well as for engagement with livestocks and landscapes long since woodlands are increasingly becoming targets for restoration and understanding of cattle's place in wood pasture management can surely aid conservation grazing there are a number of conservation reasons for keeping cattle in woodlands these include the benefits to biodiversity by reducing tree and scrub regeneration maintaining open habitats and by decreasing dominant plant species conservation managers who wish to encourage a range of ancient and semi-natural woodland types have encouraged lower stock intensities usually a stocking around 0.5 livestock units per hectare something that was clearly managed by medieval farmers by way of stints small herd sizes and restrictions on the month and length of grazing for restoration of lowland wood pasture and maintenance of parkland environments a higher grazing intensity is usually recommended the grazing of enclosed spaces was a particular feature of the medieval period within the southeast and it is important to consider the varying environments that would have existed within ring fenced areas including seasonally grazed dens and the more heavily cropped factories and deer parks of the early and later medieval periods traditional breeds hold value in their ability to make use of lower quality feed personally in an uncertain world i see such traits as valuable as they and they need not be a barrier to production and profit i wonder whether event any of you attended the fantastic cba southeast nsas conference on climate change last weekend one of the traits of the sussex breed of cattle is that it's purported to have twice as many sweat glands as other european breeds and is capable of adjusting its hot weather this has meant it was exported to south america australia and south africa where its ability to cope with high debt high temperatures was valued our ability to learn from the livestock of the past has therefore great potential in helping us respond to climate change and other trials of the future well i hope this brief overview has given you some idea about the research contained within my new book castle's importance to kent has been under-appreciated historically something that archaeology as well as historical sources can help to illustrate thanks very much that was um fascinating it is as i said before something i don't know too much about it's um interesting that what we are looking at now in terms of our ecology and introducing um bran breeds that have um have gone out of common use or common them um population uh into our opponents and one of the things you mentioned about the home home store you mentioned and of course by blaine where i've done some research there um on the archaeology of that area and uh they've introduced bison into um the the fields around there could you um explain why they why you think that might be important in terms of introducing other breeds um well um bison aren't necessarily i mean they're they're very unique species uh european bison um that their habitat is uh you know the the sort of primordial forest of eastern europe primarily and what i'm really interested in is is um i mean the bleeding is a product of medieval wood pasture um that's the inheritance its inheritance in the landscape today um and that is perhaps more tangible to me than a a bronze age or pre-bonds age environment which would have contained bison that's not to say i don't understand enough about um bison's impact on some of maybe the dominant plant species which they might be trying to control in the plane i believe that maybe they they may be trying to open up the habitat which i hear bison are quite good at i mean um they're quite different to domesticated cattle um but certainly i think that they're also pasturing cattle within the bleeding and um i'd be interested to see the impact of cattle there as well um on opening up the woodland reducing some of the bracken cover maybe um but i think in terms of modern cattle breeds they're quite far removed from from what we had in the medieval period and there weren't breeds as such in the medieval period uh there was a huge diversity in cattle um all different soaps and sizes pulled and unpulled you know with horns and without horns different colors um but there may have been regional uh genetic regionalization um no black black cattle in wales or um the sussex cattle brown cattle in the south east that may have become more prevalent over time and then and then um as uh as breeds which are really a post-medieval invention start to be um you know part of the agricultural revolution that's that's really when breeds come about but that's not to say that this this genetic legacy regional genetic legislative cattle wasn't there for the medieval period but yeah i'll be really interested to see how the european bison do in um the bling i am interested in it but as i say my focus is really domesticated stock and the stock of the medieval period rather than rather than the pre-medieval period which we might associate with the european bison okay yeah i'm probably as guilty as anybody else about you know when i consider about pastoralism in in the middle east times i think about sheep and swine particularly when we think of the um the trackways and the hollow ways that um that we know very well that have been created i always think of them of them driving pigs um to market driving pigs between uh pastures that that kind of thing so we've got a lot more to to thank the castle herders for then by the sounds of it yeah i think so and that's not to say that um you know the drove ways weren't utilized for the movement of pigs they almost certainly were but i think that um some of the morphology of the drove ways hints that maybe cattle were part of that that movement um we have greens and stopping places that um possibly wouldn't necessarily be with with good watering sites will possibly wouldn't be required by um um some of the fantastic work that martin bell's been doing on the on the droveways uh shows that really they are quite you know some antiquity um i think that maybe the more scientific work that we can do on dating some of these um root ways is really going to be beneficial for our understanding of um just how many other livestock species and how over what a great time frame these these these root ways may have evolved um certainly to my mind the the movement of cattle helps to produce that hollow way um by erosive effects as soon as as soon as the ground is is disturbed enough that water can get in and start really eroding channeling gullies through these on the downwind that's quite clear you know if you walk up a porsche onto the onto the north downs or the south downs you see you see those erosion gullies um i think that cattle would have been quite important the movement of cattle to really really kick off that process maybe more so than pigs although you know pigs root um as as they move you know i think that they would be chived along a bit more than cattle and it's the hoofs of cattle that i think maybe kick off that erosive process and have really been key to the formation of some of the hollow ways and droveways within the southeast so just talking on one more general point andy um because we get we've got a lot of student members we've got free free student membership um for this year uh completely free if you're a registered student anywhere in the world and you want to join the kent archaeological society and receive your members publications and access to all the events and uh communications from from myself and other people in the society um one of the things that we we've been trying to um you know encourage people like yourself to do is to to inspire some of those people to think about different ways of approaching heritage so what particularly got you interested in this subject um i've always been interested in agriculture and i've always been interested in ecology um i came into the world of archaeology but i still had those underlying interests um i excavated near hayward's heath and i encountered um a vacary site so that really kicked off my my interest in the cattle economy and the more more i researched it the deeper i saw it going and maybe um that it been sort of forgotten aspects of the southeast pass but kind of my my um recommendation for anyone who's interested in archaeology is look to some of your other interests as well and maybe bring that into um into your archaeology sphere and that can really kind of kick on your interest and your and your research into specific um elements of archaeology in the history of um for me our historic landscape but other people have you know diverse interests and i think really embrace them and try and um find what find what interests you um find what you're passionate about and there there's it's such a diverse field archaeology um you can find so many interests within it and i would i would really encourage other student uh students to um to get involved with local societies i mean there's a huge fountain of knowledge out there members of societies the journal the excellent journals that are produced by societies is a real resource for students i think but primarily my real message would be um use what you're interested in alongside archaeology and really really kind of embrace your interests yeah that's good advice um if you if you study something you like chances are you need to do a job with something you like and then it won't feel like a job that's the idea that's right yeah so then it's just on a professional level from uh from an archaeological archaeologist's perspective the um generally when we find uh animal remains on site you know you make a note of it you sort of the species if you can identify it yourself and it goes off to post excavation um but it sounds like um you know there's a lot more to it when it gets to your desk it's not just kind of recording what there is it's um it's thinking about it and applying it to your to your own reflections on the past and and the importance of what's been kept where and how much of it has been kept there uh that kind of thing is that something that in your professional life that you're allow to indulge yourself um in your interest particularly and how does that fit in with the the research aims well my my employer archaeology southeast and ucl i mean they've been massively encouraging over my career for me to develop my career um you know support through through my phd in in giving me time to attend um uh supervisory meetings and things like that i did it part time when i was while still working full-time i did over six years of um a part-time study uh and my my um amazing supervisors professor stephen rippon was a real sort of inspiration for me but in terms of my day-to-day work i think it's always just um seeing those avenues just just finding out what you're interested in and um and pursuing that that there'll always be an angle that you that you can pursue um in your work and um yeah i've been i've been massively encouraged to do that by by my employer who've just been absolutely fantastic um so yeah i've been very lucky really um you know a lot of work outside of outside of my day job but um but by doing field work you know um you know decade decade plus in the field um really really doing my um sort of ground work there but then then finding avenues that i was interested in and then taking that on to a research level oh what we've got a few comments coming in so if you don't mind andy i'd like to just read some of those out to you we have a message from jane um she says she hadn't really thought about this before because she's worked on an early 14th century food account from tonbridge priory of cows and beef were being brought from stock at yielding in tonbridge and having envisaged open fields up to now can she presume that these cows were being kept alongside the pigs in woodland area around this part of the world i think certainly in the in the early medieval period in the world uh things start to change as you as you move later through the medieval period but um i think that a period of cattle summering would have preceded the autumn panic season um so there's almost some kind of symbiosis between between the um swine pannage and go in and clear up the acorn crop which is as i explained in my talk is is quite detrimental to the um pasture of cows you know acorns are poisonous to cows um so and that's still practiced in the uh new forest today you know the um the swine will clear up the acorn crop and so you can then pasture cows and ponies on the heathland there but um but yeah in the early medieval period i think certainly cattle were pastured in the wild during the summer up till the autumn and then maybe pigs took over okay so would have cleared the acorns so is that why we haven't got the the padanga um kind of like the spanish have their acorn fed pork uh they're very famous stuff and we've been appearing away so that the cows can get in there and do some forestry for us yeah i think that's something that we've really lost in our um livestock economy in britain you know we we had a barricade ham basically you know it's uh um you can still buy um uh um pannage pig um you can still buy it in the new forest i believe and i think on there's places on the borders of wales where you can still buy um free-ranging woodland fred swine but it's it's it's been lost so i it would be fantastic if someone reintroduced it into the world i think what a quality thing to produce that is and that's that's really kind of my interest is that some of these some of these agricultural regimes of the past i think should be re-embraced we're looking for a um we're looking at our landscape now we're looking at climate change you know impacts on um on wildlife um these old regimes they were they they worked well in with the forest ecology so so why not re-embase um uh panic swine in the world you know there's still a huge amount of acorn and beach marks there what a fantastic piece of produce that would be i'm sure that people in top restaurants in london would be falling over themselves to get hold of wild and ham you know yeah yeah okay well that's um we've got another question there here from jillian uh you mentioned some of them in your talk and uh she wants to know what documentary sources have you used in your research um huge variety really um uh everything from customers to um anglo-saxon charters um yeah memorial accounts um yeah a huge diversity okay and we've got many of the resources for um for tires we've got tides and monument to exchange inscriptions on our website and that people can look at for free uh we don't have that kind of level of um detail then maybe we should then speak to a lot to our honorary librarian about them stocking up some more on that on those sources well andy i want to thank you for for coming online tonight to talk about your your research and hopefully it's inspired a few people to think about some different um ways of approaching our heritage um and knowing that there are organizations and companies that will support your research it must be quite refreshing for you to to be able to follow something that you're very obviously extremely passionate about and as i said before we we do a series of these talks and we're always very very grateful when people give their time up and to to talk to our members and and beyond on these um these events now um this will be this is recorded it's available on youtube if you're watching on youtube thanks for joining us and uh don't forget to subscribe to our channel so you get updates on everything that comes up and also um put a thumbs up on us down the bottom as well um to any of our members who've had um the latest magazine and at least bulletin um that's been distributed there are some volunteering opportunities at the kent archaeological society now that we're all opening up and uh there'll be lots of mixed ability um volunteering opportunities and also mixed interests volunteering opportunities uh in the communications and media and website and everything else i i could always do with some extra help so again communications at kent archaeology.org.uk if you want to get involved in that and there are lots of other opportunities as well for data gathering data input and all sorts of things like this um so andy um i want to thank you again for um for coming tonight and speaking to us so eloquently and so interestingly on this subject and for sticking around to answer my questions as well well thank you it's real privilege um to talk to you all this is great and keep up the good work fred thank you and then don't forget andy's book the wandering herd will be available which is the publisher it's win gather press which is an imprint of oxford books okay right so if you think that will um help with your research then please make sure you um check it in your local library or um maybe you can get an article in there arch camp for us for the next edition andy that would be really nice okay you're very welcome too okay well thanks everyone thank you ever so much for tuning in and tomorrow and joining us uh on youtube if you are uh have a great weekend the rest of it and um join us for our next event which will be another trusty talk and details of which will be on our website on chemical archaeology dot co dot uk slash news slash events thanks again and uh enjoy the rest of your weekend thank you [Music] you