L'élevage dans le Nord de la France (XIe-XIIIe siècles). Quelques jalons de recherche

Abstract

In response to the sollicitation of the archaeozoologists and to an invitation to a necessary reassessment of the history of farming Systems, the historians of Mediaeval cattle-breeding owe it to themselves to be more careful in the collection of their basic data : numbering and composition of the herds, size of the farmers' live-stock, size of the areas dedicated to grazing. A first approach of the monasteries' herds in Picardy and Ile-de-France leads to the recognition of the existence of quasi-standard units if locks of 500 sheep, herds of 20 cows and of about 10 to 20 horsesjor example. The forest grazing and the early marketing of pigs, better known thanks to a strictly enforced control of their itinerary, suggests also to redirect the research towards the meatretail trade (both urban and rural) and to reassess the role played by the local markets of the rural boroughs. With regard to the ploughing triad formed by the donkey, the ox and the horse, one sees that after a long period in which they are usedside by side, the donkey and the ox are progressively abandonned in the later third ofthe XIIIth century, while the use of the horse increasingly spreads for carriage and harrowing, before being frequently resorted to for ploughing over the XIIIth century.

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