Human-Horse Interactions

Horse burials form part of a diverse Anglo-Saxon burial practice, ranging from their inclusions in cremations, occasionally in large numbers, to the relatively rare appearance in inhumation cemeteries. Interpretations largely view their inclusion as indicative of status, signifying a social group or prestige. Such analysis is anthropocentric, as it views horses as passive commodities for humans to use, ignoring the processes of the two species living alongside each other. By using posthumanism, aimed at decentring the human, it can be possible to develop our understanding of animal-human relationships. The skeletal data from horse and human burials dating to the early medieval period in Britain was examined to create osteobiographies – the life story based on the evidence provided by an individual’s skeleton – alongside surviving texts and material culture. Use as transportation was highly probable, though evidence was lacking on many of the skeletal remains to support this, but the act of riding would likely allow a close relationship to form between individual humans and horses. A posthumanist approach can force understandings of past animals to focus beyond socioeconomic interpretations, but it is difficult to ignore the likely anthropocentric nature of past humans in attempting to reconstruct their past interactions and relationships with nonhuman individuals.

Cette étude ethnologique des relations contemporaines entre humains et chevaux a été réalisée dans le cadre du master 2 en Anthropologie sociale et culturelle de l'Université de Strasbourg. Elle est le résultat d'un travail de recherche réalisé sur deux ans à partir de trois terrains : l'un dans une structure d'hippothérapie en Belgique, un second dans une structure de tourisme équestre en France et enfin, dans la province de la Altagracia en République dominicaine auprès de propriétaires de chevaux de Paso Higüeyano.

Ce compte-rendu se veut rendre compte des modalités relationnelles et environnementales entre humains et chevaux sur les terrains ethnographiés : les descriptions des interlocutrices et interlocuteurs rencontré.e.s, des actrices et acteurs mobilisé.e.s, des représentations et des réseaux humains, non-humains, d'artefact et de pratiques recensées y ont été analysées par le prisme du genre, de la classe sociale, de l'appartenance ethnique et d'âge observés. Ensuite, le recueil des discours et l’observation des pratiques de mes interlocuteurs et interlocutrices témoigne, -par le biais de préoccupations relatives au bien-être animal, faisant directement écho aux questions de l'effort et du travail animal-, d'un bouleversement des représentations de l'animal, de son statut et témoigner de ruptures, de conflits et de continuités relevant de la "tradition" et "modernité" des pratiques équestres.

People and horses have a deep, co-constructed, and co-evolutionary history. This dissertation evaluates sociopolitical change of the Hungarian Bronze Age (2800 – 800 BC) in the context of long-term shifts in human-horse relationships. In the Bronze Age, horses are assumed to mount the development of complex polities ruled by elite, chariot driving warrior aristocracies which transformed the Old World. Equestrians are placed at the core of the political economy at the intersections of transport and control of trade, warfare, warrior institutions, and ideologies. In this dissertation, I test the political economy model, challenged with a multispecies archaeology, to investigate the role of novel human-horse interactions suspected to undergird these
transformations.

With an integrated methodology, the first to combine zooarchaeology, bioarchaeology, stable isotope analysis, material culture study, and GIS mapping, I analyzed data I collected from seven settlements and ten cemeteries. I found the earliest horseback riders in history, the earliest postcranial pathologies in horses, the earliest evidence of specialized breeding and exchange in horses, and no evidence of chariotry. The earliest riding was not restricted by class or sex, and there is little indication of elite control of horse production, ownership, or use in the Hungarian Bronze Age. This creates an interpretive problem for the political economy approach, which anticipates that horses were co-opted by aspiring elites in their attempts to create wealth and finance rule. This phase of human-horse relationships was not yet defined by equestrian power as overarching sociopolitical power. Equestrianism came early in the Bronze Age; the politicalization of horses came later. Not until the very end of the Bronze Age were horses clearly incorporated into pursuits of power and in warfare. Even then, horses emerge as important in resistance to centralized power as a vehicle to consolidate it.

The results of this dissertation undermine the proposed widespread dissemination of chariot warrior aristocracies at the beginning of the European Bronze Age. Dismounting the elite male warrior from his chariot complicates an old but persistent Bronze Age grand narrative that has at its heart an elite androcentric mastery of nature, animals, women, commoners, rural dwellers, and others through time. Ordinary horseback herders, commoners, and women made equal contributions to the development of complex societies of the European Bronze Age with and through horses.

The South African Defence Force (SADF) made effective use of the horse mounted soldier in the Namibian Independence War or ‘Border War’, 1966 to 1989, in Namibia (South West African) and Angola, in a conflict usually depicted as a series of high profile mechanised infantry operations. Nevertheless, the legacy of the horse-mounted infantryman of the South African War era commando was evident in this unit, which proved competent in the counter-insurgency patrol in the Area of Operations, and subsequently domestic deployment during civilian struggle during the State of Emergency. This article offers an exploration of the Potchefstroom Equestrian Centre’s contribution to horse and rider training and the military use of horses in counterinsurgency and urban peace enforcement operations in the period c.1974-1985.

In models for the European Bronze Age, horses have been placed at the heart of political economies, at the intersections of transport and control of trade, warfare, warrior institutions, and ideologies (Earle, Kristiansen 2010; Kristiansen, Larsson 2005). In this paper, I synthesize the results of my research of equestrianism and the origins of complex societies in the Hungarian Bronze Age (Kanne in press). I view equestrianism as a locus for sociopolitical and economic change, demonstrating how the presence of fully domesticated horses, likely riders, new riding bits, long-distance movement of horses, and shifts in horse demography coalesced within the early centuries of of the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age (2020-1730 cal BC), at the founding of tell societies.

While equestrianism helped to instigate the broad changes in culture, genes, and probably language, seen in the European Bronze Age, it does so in unexpected ways in Hungary. By allowing increased interconnectivity, aiding in building expansive exchange networks with the transport of raw materials and finished goods, and accelerating the movement of people and ideas, equestrianism here also apparently worked against the institution of social hierarchies and centralized governance thought to be inherent to the European Bronze Age. I establish that horses were vital to create tell societies in Hungary. However, because riding was relatively widespread, and not restricted by class or sex, horses first acted more as leveling mechanisms to limit social difference. I explore the movement of people and horses based on strontium isotope analyses, horse and bridle bit distributions, locations of ores and mines, and known trade routes, to present a model of how equestrianism helped to prevent exclusionary rule. By the terminal Late Bronze Age, in the face declining agropastoral productivity, and dissolving tell communities, equestrianism becomes more typically embedded in expressions of overt political authority and territorial defense. This work positions equestrianism as a key feature of the adaptability of human societies in the Metal Ages, affording the relatively sudden transformations that characterize the beginning of the Bronze Age, whilst enabling the resilience to cope with the changes that mark its end.

During the Great War, the horse was essential to military efficiency. Horses hauled artillery guns, transported vital supplies and ammunition, and carried men into battle. The military horse was, in fact, a weapon. Many thousands of horses were purchased and supplied to the British Expeditionary Force at great expense, because without them an Army could not function. Although the British Army was the most modern of all the belligerent forces during the Great War, the horse was nevertheless favoured because of its reliability and versatility. For example, horses coped much better than motor vehicles where the going was difficult. It was horse-power that ensured the Army’s lines-of-communication were maintained. Indeed, without an adequate supply of horses it is probable that the British Army would not have achieved victory in 1918.

However, the military horse was also a weapon which quickly broke down when it was not properly maintained. The British Army had learned this to its cost during the Boer War, when more horses had been killed by bad management than by enemy action. Good horse management in the field depended upon the soldier. It was essential that he had received adequate training, and it was also essential that he take responsibility for his horse’s well-being. During the Great War, all soldiers given ‘ownership’ of a horse were taught to put their horse’s needs before their own, and to always think first of their horse. They were taught to see their horse in the same way as an infantryman would his rifle; as something he may have cause to rely upon and which it was therefore in his best interests to look after. The soldier-horse relationship developed once the soldier’s care became one of sympathetic consideration. Soldiers and their horses spent most of their lives together when on active service, and it was this close proximity which helped to bond them into a unit. Many soldiers came to see their horses as comrades; they named them, and went to great lengths to protect their horses from harm. From the Army’s perspective, the soldier-horse relationship ensured that an expensive military asset was properly maintained.

At home, portrayals of the soldier-horse relationship extended this vital contribution to the war effort beyond the battlefield. For example, images and stories that told of the soldier’s kindness to his horse bolstered a positive illusion the British had of themselves as a people capable of both strength and compassion. Images of the soldier-horse relationship played an important part in helping the British people to imagine war. They also provided much-needed comfort and reassurance when friends and loved ones were in danger. Importantly, by studying these portrayals dispassionately, we find that they were never entire flights of fancy, and often bore more than a passing resemblance to the soldier’s actual experience. Indeed, it becomes possible to question whether sense and sentimentality ever did entirely part company in the British imagination.

Like their flesh and blood inspiration, portrayals of the soldier-horse relationship have not received the attention they merit. By rectifying this oversight, this thesis not only contributes to study of the horse-human relationship, but also to our knowledge of the Great War. Not least, because we achieve a better appreciation of what it was like to live in the War’s shadow.

Thesis is available to download UDORA:  http://hdl.handle.net/10545/621040

The origins of riding have been an elusive and contentious subject for archaeologists. Recent research in archaeology and ancient DNA (aDNA) have begun to clarify early riding and the genetic make-up of the first domesticated horses. In this paper, I pull together evidence from horse bones, human remains, the first bits, and aDNA of people and horses to explore what riding may have been like around 2000 BC. The function of early bits, bit-wear, horse size and conformation are examined with reference to archaeological finds and experimental study to produce a picture of what an early riding horse may been like and, along with human remains, how riding may have been practiced. This is augmented by aDNA information regarding coat color and what early people may have been selectively breeding for in horses. The form and function of the earliest bits will be familiar to most equestrians, as will the osteological changes in people and horses that occur from riding. I draw parallels to modern bits and bitting traditions to elucidate how basic practices of horsemanship have great antiquity. I conclude with a discussion about how the language between people and horses through horse training may have been part of the domestication process itself.

Despite that riding is typically gendered female in the present, equestrianism is almost always gendered male in the past. In this paper, I take a deep dive into the archaeological record to excavate relationships between women and horses. These relationships have a thoroughly ancient history that has been poorly acknowledged. Ancient DNA (aDNA), stable isotope analyses, and sexing of burials based on human remains, rather than grave goods, allows us to appreciate the antiquity of female equestrians as the norm, rather than the exception. I explore how women regularly rode through time, beginning with my research documenting the earliest riders from the Hungarian Middle Bronze Age (2020-1730 cal BC). I then draw together large datasets of equestrian burials, and famous cases like the Pazyryk ‘Princess of Ukok’ from the Siberian Altai of the 5th century BC, and the Birka Warrior from the 10th century AD in Sweden, to reposition women as vanguards of early equestrianism, and of equestrianism more broadly.

The soldier-horse relationship was nurtured by The British Army because it made the soldier and his horse into an effective fighting unit. Soldiers and their Horses explores a complex relationship forged between horses and humans in extreme conditions. As both a social history of Britain in the early twentieth century and a history of the British Army, Soldiers and their Horses reconciles the hard pragmatism of war with the imaginative and emotional. By carefully overlapping the civilian and the military, by juxtaposing "sense" and "sentimentality," and by considering institutional policy alongside individual experience, the soldier and his horse are re-instated as co-participators in The Great War. Soldiers and their Horses provides a valuable contribution to current thinking about the role of horses in history.

I present the results of a comparative study of equestrianism in the Hungarian Bronze Age which integrated strontium isotope analysis of horses from seven tell settlements with the study of human and horse remains and their related material culture. Strontium isotope analysis was a key component in establishing regionally local horse production, but that a few horses were either ridden or traded into tell societies far from their birthplace. This supported increased equestrian interconnectivity at a supra-regional level. Used alone, this could support existing theoretical models of the Hungarian Bronze Age. However, when included with all lines of research, the isotope evidence suggested local use, travel on and trade in horses that was not under the auspices of an elite class of warrior rulers. In this case, the methodological integration of stable isotope analysis with multiple lines of evidence forced a reexamination of Bronze Age narratives of human-horse relationships that have particular consequences for traditional explanations of political authority. There has long been the assumption of horses driving the development of the complex tell societies of the Hungarian Bronze Age, as part of a ‘chariot package’ that allowed for warrior aristocracies to rule the tells and control the bronze trade. The lack of any obvious linkages of horses with elites, the lack of any evidence of chariots, and the fact that riding was widespread and not restricted by class or gender forces a reinterpretation of the roles that horses played in the Hungarian Bronze Age. This confirms the need to have a detailed comparative and contextual understanding of the animals and humans involved in biogeochemical studies when used in the formation of broad narratives of European Prehistory.

Transformative Encounters by C.P.R. van der Weide examines the transformative potential of energetic encounters within staged frames of performance art. It set out to explore if performances can function as a counterbalance to the capitalist western society through inviting for a felt sense of lost interconnectivity:
Can a performance become an island of timelessness in which the relational here and now, the encounter between subjects, transforms the perception of self and other?

This study draws its inspiration and contextualization from a multiplicity of areas: philosophical ideas of Sufism (also known as the mystical strand of the Islam), sociological studies of horse- human communication and the anthropological concept of liminality.

In Chapter One three philosophical principles in Sufism; ‘adab’ and ‘fana’ as defined by Kabir Helminski and ‘waqt’ as defined by Gerhard Böwering, are held next to the practice of contemporary (performance) artists: Adrian Howells, Bill Viola and Kenzo Kusuda to contextualize the topic of research and highlight a selection of artists that informed it. Chapter two, led by the writing of Dulce Garcia and Gregory Bateson, examines the relevant aspects of communication and dynamics in horse-human relation and discusses the process and outcome of the performance I AM THE HORSE. Chapter three, drawing on Victor Turner, takes a close look at the characteristics of the anthropological concept of liminality, and discusses the process and outcome of the performance We Are Here.

Throughout, this research explores the parallels between the different areas and their relevance for- and applicability to contemporary performance making.

Riding is a borderland; variously blurring, demarcating, and transcending the boundaries between human and horse. This hybrid beast, born in the Eurasian Bronze Age (c. 2000-1000 BC), becomes increasingly and necessarily bound to the making, defense, and seizing of geographical borders. In this paper, I explore the novel boundary crossings between human and horse that are conjoined while mediating new cognitive and physical geographies mapped in the Bronze Age. Borderlands are scarred with interactions, evidenced by the osteopathologies of people and horses, and the material culture of their negotiations, the bridle bits. Combining this multi-stranded data with the geospatial expansion of equestrianism, I track the shifting frontiers traversed by the human and horse couple through the European Bronze Age. This integration of bodies, behaviors, sociality, and experience resulted in a new way of being, transforming both species as it unfolded. Equestrianism afforded new ways of life, increased interconnectivity, and ways to resist, consent to, or assert political power. Once the equestrian leaps forth from Pandora’s box, however, political and terrestrial boundaries become ever signaled by the centaur.

This paper is somewhat dated, based on only the first few months of my fieldwork in 2013, and no longer representative of my current work and thinking.

Chapter Abstract: 'This chapter is a long overdue update to the ethnographic record of Native American horse culture. Based on extended fieldwork with three North-western tribes, the chapter illustrates the continued relevance of the horse as a ‘cultural keystone species’ (Garibaldi and Turner 2004). Three examples of contemporary expressions of horse culture on the reservations are presented: the creation of the Nez Perce horse breed; horse parading and ceremonial rides; and the recent formal creation of the sport of Indian Relay Racing. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the contested fate of feral horses on three neighbouring reservations.'

The soldier-horse relationship was nurtured by The British Army because it made the soldier and his horse into an effective fighting unit. Soldiers and their Horses explores a complex relationship forged between horses and humans in extreme conditions. As both a social history of Britain in the early twentieth century and a history of the British Army, Soldiers and their Horses reconciles the hard pragmatism of war with the imaginative and emotional. By carefully overlapping the civilian and the military, by juxtaposing "sense" and "sentimentality," and by considering institutional policy alongside individual experience, the soldier and his horse are re-instated as co-participators in The Great War. Soldiers and their Horses provides a valuable contribution to current thinking about the role of horses in history.

[Available open access at https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/9/1513/htm]

The idea of what is natural has particular relevance in the thoroughbred racing and breeding discourse. It guides breeding regulations; influences how the thoroughbreds' behaviour is perceived and has implications for husbandry, handling, training and racing practices. This study investigates how key industry and animal advocacy informants based in the US, Australia and the UK conceptualise naturalness within the context of common racing practices that potentially impact the horses' welfare. The informants were interviewed using semi-structured interviewing and photo-elicitation. Four common images of thoroughbreds on race day were presented to elicit the informants' responses. Differences emerged between how the two groups tended to describe the images and the role naturalness played in their conceptualisations. The findings were analysed using an updated version of the Layers of Engagement with Animal Protection developed by Bergmann to situate the informants' conceptualisations of naturalness within the wider thoroughbred protection discourse. In conclusion, the industry informants tended to defend the status quo of common racing practices. They tended to naturalise and normalise these practices and downplay their welfare impact. This poses risks for thoroughbred welfare, which are amplified by misrepresentations of what is natural. With the public's understanding of welfare and racing practices growing, racing's legitimacy may be further questioned. Opportunities to leverage the potential of the notion of naturalness for thoroughbred protection are discussed.

The working relationship between a soldier and his horse was based upon mutual trust and respect. It was nurtured by the British Army because it made the combination a far more effective tool in warfare. This was in no way sentimental, but born out of a drive for economy, pragmatism, military success.

The soldier-horse relationship also inhabits a space between myth and reality. During The Great War, the soldier's care for his horse was used to portray his selflessness, stoicism, and kindness amidst the inhumanity of war. He became a knight for the modern ear, through whom the realities of war were more safely portrayed.

Today, the 'war horse' lives on, but under threat of 'disneyfication'. The myth must be addressed if this once crucial, partnership is not to be stripped of its original complexity.