Jacqui -- I cannot comment specifically upon the frequency of Bronze Age
horses in the UK, but (based on the pattern evident in other parts of the
world, wherever the domesticated horse came into use), I think it is
likely that these animals did influence -- in fact totally revolutionized
-- the way people fought. In particular, it had a great outcome on who the
winner was: almost always, the people who had the horses over those who
did not.

As to the stature of Bronze Age horses: the likelihood is that they cover
the size range we're used to hearing about from other localities at this
time, i.e., 12 to 14 hands, which is also the median size range for their
wild ancestors in Euroope and West Asia. If someone has a Bronze Age site
and the animals in it are either uniformly smaller than this (i.e. 10 or
11 hands), or uniformly larger (i.e. 15 hands, which is about as big as
any horses ever were prior to the coming of the railroad in the 1820's to
England), then that would be worth noting, because in that case something
"funny" is going on -- i.e. importation leading to outcrossing (for
extra-big ones), or island isolates (for the extra-small ones).

As to the idea that horses might be "too small" to be useful in war: I had
to chuckle at this suggestion, for there has never been a single moment,
since the first instances of horse domestication in southwestern Russia
and the Middle East, in which they were not used for war. Humans figured
out how to use big ones, middle-sized ones, and small ones in different
ways for warfare. There has also been an evolution in techniques of
riding, handling, armoring, and tacking -- very well-documented for the
Middle East, and kind of amusing at that as you watch them figure out that
the rider might be better off sitting somewhere ahead of, instead of on
top of, the horse's croup. Each world culture that has taken up horses has
developed at least a few unique ideas as to how to handle and use them in
warfare, everything from cutting their tongues out to riding them
sidesaddle to slipping on and off their backs during battle so as to
enable steady shooting with bow and arrow along with rapid redeployment of
cavalry units. The bottom line here is that it is anachronistic, to say
the least, to declare animals smaller than what would have been acceptable
to the 19th-century British cavalry "too small to be used for warfare."

Jacqui, the person who sent in the question sounds very familiar with the
scientific literature generally, so perhaps this won't be needed; but
there are a couple of basic works on the general subject of horses in
ancient warfare that anyone might enjoy reading. They are:

Chenevix-Trench, Charles. 1974. Horsemanship.

Jankovich, Miklos. 1971. They Rode Into Europe: The Fruitful Exchange in
the Arts of Horsemanship Between East and West.

Dent, Anthony. 1974. The Horse: Through Fifty Centuries of Civilization.

The questioner might also enjoy looking at my 1998 "Conquerors: The Roots
of New World Horsemanship" -- but -- she will have to ignore or forgive
the fact that some of the text is based on erroneous dates given by
Anthony and Brown for early domestication at Dereivka. Except for an
apparently later start to horse domestication, however, the discussion,
and particularly all the details of armor, weapons, techniques and
strategy, may be of some use.

Also, I would suggest to anyone interested in the early domestication of
the horse that they study the maps published in 1999 by the American
Society of Mammalogists in a paper on Equus caballus authored by myself
and Robert S. Hoffmann. This paper is online at www.equinestudies.org
under "Knowledge Base" -- click on the "Mammalian Species" paper. These
maps were put together with painstaking care, and they show how different,
formerly wild subspecies of horse were taken into domestication in
different world areas, then either bred "within strain" or crossed to
produce the variety of horse breeds we have today. A crucial point made in
this paper is that the Przewalski horse is not the major ancestor of the
domestic horse, but rather other populations of horses that existed west
of the Ural Mountains. -- Deb Bennett



> A query sent to me - all answers welcome..... I have suggested the query
> be addressed to Robin
> Bendry - but if anyone else can contribute that would be great.
>
> Question
>
>  I am interested in this subject in relation to the appearance of large
> ditched enclosures in the
> later Bronze Age. No-one appears to have considered whether there might be
> any link between the
> appearance of horses, particularly the riding of horses, and the
> development of new types of
> palisaded and ditched enclosures.
>
> My reading of various site reports suggests that horses are present on a
> few Middle Bronze Age
> sites (Deverel-Rimbury 1500-1250 cal BC), but become more common on Late
> Bronze Age ones (1250-800
> cal BC), and are fairly standard by the Early Iron Age, albeit still in
> small numbers. I wondered
> whether the Middle Bronze Age examples were still too few to have affected
> society, but whether by
> the late Bronze Age they might have become common enough to affect how
> warfare was conducted? The
> view on horse riding is linked to horsegear, of which the earliest metal
> examples I know of in
> Britain are in the Isleham hoard, later Wilburton complex, ie around 1000
> BC, and bone examples are
> known at Runnymede and Petters a little later. This may be rather late in
> comparison to the date for
> the emergence of enclosures such as Rams Hill, although most of the
> examples are later, Taplow being
> perhaps 1100, Little Wittenham around 1000, etc. Another objection that
> has been raised is the small
> size of the horses of the later Bronze Age, which I have heard described
> as too small to ride, and
> certainly too small for warfare.
>
> Has anyone pulled together the evidence for horses on Bronze Age sites in
> Britain, and is there
> much evidence on the stature of these animals? Do you have a view on the
> evidence for the use of
> horses in the Bronze Age, and do you know of any further evidence for
> whether, and if so, when, they
> were first ridden?
>
> I would be grateful for any comments or new evidence.
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> Jacqui Mulville (PhD)
> Zooarch Listowner,
> Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology,
> School of History and Archaeology
> Cardiff University
> Humanities Building
> Colum Drive
> Cardiff
> CF10 3EU
> http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/hisar/people/archaeology/jm1/
>
> Tel: + 44 (0) 29 2087 4247
> Fax: + 44 (0) 29 2087 4929
>
>
>