Introduction

Our research at the Anglo-Saxon sites of West Stow and Brandon in western Suffolk, England, suggests that a shift in animal-husbandry practices took place during the seventh and eighth centuries AD. Here we present our zooarchaeological data from the new excavations at Early Anglo-Saxon West Stow¹ (ca. AD 420–650) and Middle Anglo-Saxon Brandon (ca. AD 650–850). We compare these data to a broad survey of zooarchaeological data from over thirty Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon sites in eastern England. These data suggest a shift from a pattern of relative self-sufficiency to one based on specialized production of commodities such as wool. We examine the relationship of this change in animal economies to the social and political transformations that took place in the Middle Saxon period, including state formation, urbanism, and the intensification of trade.

Background

The Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon periods in England provide a unique opportunity to use archaeological data to study the beginnings of the complex urban societies that form the basis of the modern English nation. The Early Anglo-Saxon period begins after the withdrawal of Roman military power from Britannia, around AD 400. Constantine III appears to have withdrawn the last of the Roman legions from Britain in AD 407 to mount an expedition against the barbarian incursions in Gaul. The residents of Britain were also threatened by attacks at that time, but no help was available from Rome. In AD 410 the Roman Emperor Honorius told the citizens of the towns of Britain to see to their own defenses, and this date is usually taken as the end of Roman Britain (Esmonde Cleary 1989:136–137). Extensive archaeological research at cities such as London (Londinium) (Cowie 2008) and towns such as Winchester (Venta Belgarum) (Qualmann, Rees, and Scobie 2010:8) indicates that most of the Roman towns in southern and eastern England had lost their urban character by the beginning of the fifth century. Major Roman industries, such as the pottery industry, disappeared at about the same time (Esmonde Cleary 1989:154). Modern historical and archaeological scholarship indicates that the arrival of the peoples who came to be known as the Anglo-Saxons was not the cause of the end of Roman Britain (e.g., Esmonde Cleary 1989; Jones 1996). Britain ceased being Roman before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, which probably dates to the second quarter of the fifth century.

Historical sources for early post-Roman Britain are few. The only truly contemporary source is Gildas, a Roman Catholic cleric writing in the west of Britain in the earlier sixth century. In his De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain) (Giles 1891) he sees the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in eastern England in the fifth century as God’s punishment of the British. Based on Gildas and later sources, such as Bede’s eighth-century Ecclesiastical History (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum) (tr. Sherley-Price 1968) and the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Killings 1996), the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in Britain was traditionally seen as a substantial migration of Germanic peoples who extirpated much of the native British population and drove the rest of them westward into western Britain and Wales.

Modern scholars have questioned both the nature and the size of the Adventus Saxonum (for a modern review, see Hills 2002), suggesting that it probably represents a much smaller movement of political and military elites whose language and material culture came to dominate much of eastern England in the later fifth and sixth centuries. The nature of the Early Anglo-Saxon settlement was essentially rural and agrarian, and most people were buried in folk cemeteries, such as Spong Hill in Norfolk, as either cremations or inhumations (Hills 2001 and references therein).

By the seventh and eighth centuries, the nature of Anglo-Saxon society had changed dramatically. From a political perspective, seven powerful kingdoms, known as the heptarchy, emerged out of an earlier patchwork of small polities. One of these was the kingdom of East Anglia, located in what today are the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in eastern England. Rich burials, such as the seventh-century burial from Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk (Carver 2005) point to increasing social differentiation in the seventh and eighth centuries. In the seventh and eighth centuries, we also see the establishment of the first towns of post-Roman Northwest Europe, the emporia (Hill and Cowie 2001). Four emporia have been identified in eastern England, at Ipswich, London, Southampton (Hamwic), and York. These towns served as centers of both regional and international trade.

Recent archaeological research (Scull 2009) has refined the chronology of the settlement of Ipswich. The emporium at Ipswich in Suffolk appears to have been established on the bank of the Orwell River under the aegis of the East Anglian royal house in the seventh century as a way of channeling and controlling exchange contacts with the continent (Scull 2009). Beginning in the early years of the eighth century, Ipswich was home to the first large-scale pottery industry in post-Roman Britain (Rogerson 2001:175; see Blinkhorn 1999 for a discussion of the chronology of Ipswich ware). Unlike earlier Anglo-Saxon pottery, which was hand-built and fired in a bonfire, Ipswich ware was turned on a slow wheel and kiln-fired. It was distributed throughout East Anglia, and it is also found at major ecclesiastical and high-status sites throughout eastern England.

Similar transformations are seen in the Anglo-Saxon countryside. There is evidence for the development of high-status estate centers beginning as early as the late sixth or early seventh century, as well as evidence for substantial settlement shifts, the so-called “seventh-century shuffle” (Reynolds 2005), and the possible beginnings of the open-field system as early as the eighth century in central England (Oosthuizen 2007). In short, the political, socioeconomic, and settlement-pattern data suggest that complex societies were developing in eastern England by the seventh or eighth centuries AD.

Zooarchaeology has played a major role in studies of the rise of complex societies in both the Eastern Hemisphere and the Americas. Previous studies have shown that faunal analyses can contribute to our understanding of trade, political economy, and increasing social complexity (see Campana et al. 2010; Crabtree 1990a; deFrance 2009). In Britain, Bourdillon (1994) has shown that the inhabitants of the early urban site of Hamwic, Middle Anglo-Saxon Southampton, were provisioned with animals drawn from the surrounding countryside and that this process required both planning and control. Similar arguments have been made for the Middle Anglo-Saxon emporium at York (O’Connor 1994; see also Hamerow 2007). Less research, however, has been carried out on the contemporary transformation of the Anglo-Saxon countryside. Field surveys and finds by metal detectorists have helped identify a series of inland sites where goods, including animal products, were exchanged (Pestell and Ulmschneider 2003). In addition, historical sources indicate that textiles were being exported from Middle Saxon England to Francia in the eighth century (Owen-Crocker 2004:173). The archaeological and historical data suggest that production for exchange played an increasingly important role in Middle Anglo-Saxon animal husbandry. Zooarchaeological data, including species ratios, age profiles, and measurement data can be used to identify specialization in animal husbandry. In addition, patterns of species and body-part representation may allow us to identify increasing social differentiation in the Middle Anglo-Saxon period.

Zooarchaeological Data from West Stow West and Brandon

Our analysis is based on faunal data from the Early Anglo-Saxon site of West Stow West and the Middle Anglo-Saxon site of Brandon, both of which are located in western Suffolk, England (Figure 16.1). We compare our data to a broader range of faunal assemblages from Early and Middle Saxon sites in eastern England to document the social and economic changes that took place in the Anglo-Saxon countryside. We look for evidence of increasingly specialized animal production and its relation to increasing social inequality in Anglo-Saxon England.

Figure 16.1. Eastern England, showing the location of the West Stow West and Brandon sites in Suffolk.

The Anglo-Saxon site of West Stow in western Suffolk remains one of the largest, well-published Early Anglo-Saxon sites in eastern England (West 1985). The original excavations were carried out at the site between 1965 and 1972 under the direction of Dr. Stanley West of the Suffolk County Archaeological Unit. The excavations uncovered sixty-nine sunken-featured buildings (SFBs) clustered around seven small “halls.” It is likely that only two or three of the halls were in use at any one time. The faunal remains from the site have also been exhaustively published (Crabtree 1989, 1990b, 1993). The data indicate that the West Stow economy was based on cattle, sheep, and pig husbandry, with little evidence for bird and mammal hunting. Both cattle and sheep appear to have been kept for a range of purposes, including meat, milk, some wool, and traction. Zooarchaeological evidence for trade was limited to a single bone from a marine flatfish. Although some animals may have moved in or out of the settlement as a result of trade, tribute, and/or payments of food-rent, the overall picture was one of relative economic self-sufficiency.

Recent excavations at West Stow West, conducted in advance of the construction of a new visitors’ center, uncovered six new buildings, including five SFBs and a post-built structure, and over seven thousand additional animal bones and fragments. These new finds have begun to change our understanding of both the West Stow settlement and its animal economy. From a settlement perspective, the new discoveries challenge Stanley West’s (1985) original model, which saw West Stow as a small bounded settlement. The new finds suggest that Early Anglo-Saxon settlement was far more widely distributed along the banks of the Lark River. These new discoveries may indicate that the plan of West Stow more closely resembles the layout of the Early Anglo-Saxon village of Mucking in Essex, where Early Anglo-Saxon building were spread across a broad stretch of the landscape (Hamerow 1993; Hirst and Clark 2009). Unfortunately, animal-bone preservation at Mucking was very poor, and the limited faunal assemblage that was recovered (mostly teeth) can tell us very little about animal husbandry and hunting practices in Early Anglo-Saxon Essex (Done 1993).

Fortunately, faunal remains were well preserved at both the original excavations at West Stow and the excavations at West Stow West. Although the faunal remains from the new excavations are still under study, preliminary analyses suggest that they show some interesting differences from the original West Stow faunal sample. Like the original faunal assemblage, the new animal-bone collection from West Stow is dominated by the remains of domestic mammals, including cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, and domestic birds, including both chickens and geese. A small number of goats were identified from the original excavations at West Stow (Crabtree 1990b:6), but no clear goat remains were identified from West Stow West. Hunting played a very minor role in the economy; there is less evidence for hunting at West Stow than there is at the neighboring late Roman (fourth-century) site of Icklingham (Crabtree 2010a), even though Icklingham was a small town whereas West Stow is a rural settlement. Evidence for hunting in the West Stow West faunal collection is limited to small numbers of bones of red deer (Cervus elaphus), badger (Meles meles), and East Anglian crane (Grus grus).

Differences between the original West Stow sample and the new data are seen in the relative importance of the main domestic mammals (Figure 16.2). Whereas the original West Stow faunal assemblages were dominated by the remains of sheep, followed by cattle, pigs, and horses, the new assemblage produced roughly equal numbers of sheep and cattle, with far fewer pigs. On the basis of the original excavations, West (1985) saw West Stow as a small village that would have been home to no more than three or four extended households at any one time. The new excavations indicate that the settlement may have been much larger, and there may have been a degree of intrasite variability in the relative importance of the various domestic species. The new West Stow data are more like the faunal data that have been recovered from other Early Anglo-Saxon settlements. Most are dominated by cattle remains, even those like Spong Hill in Norfolk (Bond 1995) that are located in areas well suited to sheep and goat husbandry (Figure 16.3). Cattle were valuable because they could provide a variety of products, including meat, milk, and traction. The aging data indicate that the West Stow West cattle were killed at all stages of life, and some of the adult bones showed traction pathologies, indicating that they had been used to pull carts and plows. Cattle may also have served as a form of wealth in Early Anglo-Saxon society, as they did in contemporary early medieval Ireland (McCormick 2008).

Figure 16.2. Species ratios based on NISP or Number of Identified Specimens per taxon for the faunal assemblages from West Stow West and the original West Stow phase 1 (fifth century), West Stow phase 2 (sixth century), and phase 3 (late sixth to seventh/eighth century) assemblages. (See Lyman [2008] for a detailed description of the quantification method used.)

Figure 16.3. Species ratios based on NISP for cattle, sheep, and pigs for thirty-one Early Anglo-Saxon and Middle Anglo-Saxon sites in eastern England. (Crabtree 2010b.)

The aging data for the sheep from West Stow West, based on dental eruption and wear, following Payne (1973), indicate that most of the animals were killed during the first two years of life (Figure 16.4), a pattern that is also seen in the original West Stow data (Crabtree 1990b). A minority of these animals survived to adulthood. These data suggest that the primary goal of caprine husbandry was probably some combination of meat, milk, and/or herd security, rather than more specialized wool production (Payne 1973; Redding 1984). The age profile seen at the new West Stow excavations is closely mirrored by the mortality profile for sheep seen at the Early Anglo-Saxon site of Kilham in East Yorkshire (Archer 2003; Crabtree 2010b:Figure 2).

Figure 16.4. Mortality profile for sheep from West Stow West, following Payne (1973). A majority of the sheep were killed during the first two years of life (stages A through D), and only a small number survived to four years of age or more (stages G through I).

Summing up, the zooarchaeological data from the new West Stow excavations and from other recently excavated Early Anglo-Saxon sites suggest that Early Saxon animal husbandry was focused on autarky or local self-sufficiency. Cattle and sheep were kept for a variety of purposes, including meat, milk, traction, and wool, although wool was not much of a focus based on the data in Figure 16.4. There is no clear evidence for specialized animal husbandry or the surplus production of commodities for markets. In addition, the Early Saxon economies were based on animal husbandry with relatively little evidence for hunting. Sykes’s (2010:178) recent survey of the evidence for deer hunting in Anglo-Saxon England has shown that this activity was not a common practice until at least the seventh century AD and that it probably served primarily as a means of supplementing the diet in times of need during the Early Anglo-Saxon period.

Archaeological and zooarchaeological data indicate that this pattern of autarky began to change in the late sixth and seventh centuries. The Staunch Meadow Brandon site (Figure 16.1) in west Suffolk typifies this change. Brandon is a wealthy estate center that was occupied from the mid-seventh century to about AD 850. Under the direction of Andrew Tester and Bob Carr, the Suffolk County Archaeological Unit carried out eight seasons of excavation at the site between 1979 and 1988 (Carr, Tester, and Murphy 1988). Approximately one-third of the site, an area of 13,000 square meters, was excavated in advance of the construction of playing fields. The excavation revealed thirty-four post-built timber buildings, plus fence lines, pits, ditches, hearths, and a church and cemetery. The site also included a waterfront industrial area on the north side of the site. Since the site was never ploughed, the Middle Saxon remains, including the fauna, were exceptionally well preserved.

Artifactual remains, such as silver pins, indicate that Brandon was a wealthy community, and the presence of a stylus suggests that at least some members of the community were literate (Carr, Tester, and Murphy 1988). Brandon was clearly a Christian community, as revealed by the presence of the church and artifacts such as a plaque depicting the eagle of St. John. It may have served as an early monastic community for much, if not all, of its life (Andrew Tester, personal communication), although our knowledge of the form and layout of Middle Anglo-Saxon monastic communities is quite limited. Often evidence for literacy is used to identify early settlements as monastic (see Blair 2005).

The excavations at Brandon yielded about 158,000 mammal and bird fragments which were initially identified in 1990 and 1991 (see Carr and Tester, forthcoming). Like the new faunal assemblage from West Stow West, the Brandon animal-bone collection was dominated by the remains of domestic animals, including cattle, sheep, pigs, horses, chickens, and geese. A small number of goats were also identified, but goats make up less than 1 percent of the identified caprine remains at the site. Hunting, however, appears to have played a more important role in the Brandon economy. The Middle Saxon inhabitants of Brandon hunted red deer (Cervus elaphus), roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), badgers (Meles meles), otters (Lutra lutra), and marine mammals, including both gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) and a dolphin or small whale. Sykes (2010:179) notes that game animals generally become more common on Middle Saxon sites and that hunting may have taken on elite associations by this time. This appears to be the case at Brandon as well. Body-part distributions for Early Anglo-Saxon sites, including West Stow, are primarily composed of meat-bearing elements, suggesting that the waste elements were left at the kill site. This is consistent with the use of hunting as an occasional dietary supplement. The body-part distributions at Middle Anglo-Saxon sites, including Brandon, are more complex, suggesting that hunting may have been more about social display than diet (Sykes 2010:178–179). The Brandon roe deer assemblage, for example, includes high numbers of forelimb elements. These complex patterns may reflect redistribution, hospitality, and feasting (Sykes 2010:180).

The avian assemblage from Brandon is equally diverse. It yielded the remains of East Anglian cranes (Grus grus), swans (Cygnus olor), ducks, divers, and other water birds and waders. The most striking avian find was the skeletal remains of a nearly complete peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Because falcons are not native to this part of England, this find represents the earliest known evidence for falconry in Anglo-Saxon England (Crabtree 2007), a sport that has always had elite associations. The evidence for falconry and hunting indicate that Brandon was a wealthy estate center in Middle Saxon England.

The species ratios for the main domestic mammals also show some important differences from both the original West Stow and the new West Stow West faunal collections (Figure 16.5). In particular, the Brandon faunal assemblage includes a higher proportion of sheep, and comparatively fewer cattle. This shift toward sheep husbandry is seen at a number of other Middle Anglo-Saxon sites in England (Figure 16.3). However, as the data from Middle Saxon Flixborough in Lincolnshire suggest, beef remained a prestige meat during Middle Saxon times (Dobney et al. 2007). Distributional data from Brandon show a distinct concentration of cattle bones around two wealthy households at the site (Crabtree and Campana, in press).

Figure 16.5. Species ratios based on NISP for the main large domestic mammals from Brandon.

The aging data for sheep from Brandon reflect more fundamental changes in animal husbandry. Whereas the West Stow West assemblage included many young sheep killed during the first two years of life, the Brandon kill-pattern was focused on mature adult sheep (Figure 16.6). The shift toward a more focused kill-pattern centered on older adult sheep is seen at other Middle Saxon sites, including Quarrington in Lincolnshire (Rackham 2003). The age profiles indicate that we may be seeing a shift toward more specialized wool production at a number of rural sites in Middle Saxon England. Although sheep produce their finest wool before the age of three years, they will continue to produce large quantities of high-quality wool for several years after. As a result, sheep in wool-producing flocks are generally not culled until they reach five to seven years of age (O’Connor 2010:12).

Figure 16.6. Mortality profile for the sheep from Middle Anglo-Saxon Brandon, following Payne (1973).

Other data from Brandon support this inference. First, a majority of the sheep from Brandon were male, based on the analysis of the pelves and horn cores. Wethers or castrated males were often preferred for wool production in the later Middle Ages because they carried heavier fleeces (Bischoff 1983:148). Females are the productive members of domestic flocks, producing both lambs and milk, in addition to wool, but the expense of keeping large numbers of castrated males was worthwhile because of the value of their wool. Detailed statistical comparisons between the Brandon faunal assemblage and the original West Stow data indicate that the Brandon sheep were significantly smaller than their West Stow counterparts (Crabtree and Campana, in press). Although the metrical data from the new West Stow West excavations are still under study, the sheep from the West Stow West excavations had an average estimated withers’ height of 60.5 centimeters, whereas the Brandon sheep were only 56.6 centimeters tall, following Von den Driesch and Boessneck (1974). The Brandon sheep may represent a smaller variety of sheep that were bred specifically for wool production. In short, the data from West Stow, Brandon, and other Early and Middle Anglo-Saxon sites in eastern England suggest that the Early-to-Middle Saxon transition was marked by a shift from autarky and production for local use to more specialized animal production for exchange.

Interpretation

How can these data contribute to our understanding of the rise of complex, stratified societies in Middle Anglo-Saxon England? Much of the earlier work on state formation in Anglo-Saxon England, such as Hodges’s (1982) Dark Age Economics, has focused on the rise of the emporia and their control by the emerging royal houses of Anglo-Saxon England. Our data suggest that the beginnings of social complexity were also dependent on fundamental changes in the countryside, and that these changes are first seen as early as the late sixth to early seventh centuries AD. At that time, high-status Anglo-Saxon settlements that include large buildings and planned layouts appear for the first time at sites such as Cowdery’s Down in Hampshire (Millett and James 1983) and Yeavering in Yorkshire (Hamerow 2006:278; Hope-Taylor 1977). Unfortunately, Cowdery’s Down produced little in the way of faunal data, and faunal preservation was poor at Yeavering as well (Hope-Taylor 1977:325–332).

The animal-bone and artifactual data from Brandon indicate that wealthy estate centers based on specialized animal production were established in eastern England by the seventh century AD. Moreover, faunal data from other early estate centers, including Wicken Bonhunt in Essex (Crabtree 2012) and Bloodmoor Hill in Suffolk (Higbee 2009), suggest that the shift to more specialized animal production for exchange may have begun as early as the late sixth to early seventh centuries. At Wicken Bonhunt, the archaeozoological data suggest that specialized pork production may have begun as early as the late sixth or early seventh century, whereas the aging data for sheep from Bloodmore Hill suggest an early shift to a pattern that is more closely focused on wool production. Rather than seeing the emporia as the driving force in Anglo-Saxon state formation, it is possible that the rebirth of urbanism was dependent upon significant changes in the Anglo-Saxon rural economy, including intensified animal production for exchange. The beginning of urbanism transformed both the city and the countryside, and a more intensive study of faunal assemblages from Anglo-Saxon rural sites may shed new light on this important socioeconomic transformation.