The only site I know of with a relatively large number of
hares is St Albans Abbey, excavated in the 1980s by Martin
and Birthe Biddle and not yet published. Two groups of
bones have been studied, from two areas of the excavations.
The provisional dating is c 9th century for one and
11th/12th for the other, and they have very similar
assemblages, including a lot of hare and roe deer (but no
rabbit or fallow, which is as it should be). Whatever the
date of the assemblages, there is no doubt that the abbey
was a very high status establishment at the time. I have
not come across a site with a lot of hare in the later
middle ages.
Serjeantson, D. (1991). Diet at St Albans Abbey.” The
Journal of the International Wine & Food Society 16: 46-50.
Crabtree, P. (ND). Animal remains from the Chapter House,
St Albans Abbey. Unpublished MS
Serjeantson, D. (1990). Two high status assemblages from St
Albans Abbey, Hertfordshire, Unpublished lecture. ICAZ
1990. Faunal Remains Unit.,
And the only site with lots of rabbit is:
Bourdillon, J. (1998). The faunal remains. In, The Lost
Manor of Hextalls, Little Pickle, Bletchingley. by R.
Poulton. Kingston, Surrey County Archaeological Unit:
139-174.
It is also from a very high status household: the manor was
owned either by Anne of Cleeves, divorced wife of Henry
VIII, or the Duke of Buckingham at the time.
I shall be interested to hear what others have come across.
----------------------
Dale Serjeantson
Research Fellow
Department of Archaeology
University of Southampton
Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK
Tel: (44) (0)23 8059 3210
Email: [log in to unmask]
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