Doherty, Sean, Alexander, Michelle Marie orcid.org/0000-0001-8000-3639, Henderson, Stuart et al. (3 more authors) (2023) Tracking the British agricultural revolution through the isotopic analysis of dated parchment. Scientific Reports. 61. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Between the sixteenth and nineteenth century, British agriculture underwent a ‘revolutionary’ transformation. Yet despite over a century of research and the recognised centrality of agricultural developments to industrialisation and population growth, the character or chronology of any ‘revolution’ during this period remains contentious. Enquiry has been hampered by the fragmented and locally specific nature of historic accounts and the broad dating of early-modern zooarchaeological assemblages. To address this, we conducted stable isotope analysis on 658 legal documents written on sheepskin parchment; a unique biological resource that records the day, month and year of use (AD 1499 to 1969). We find these provide a high temporal resolution analysis of changing agricultural practices and episodes of disease. Most significantly, they suggest that if an ‘Agricultural Revolution’ occurred in livestock management, it did so from the mid-nineteenth century, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Policy Press 2023 |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (York) > Archaeology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 10 Jan 2023 18:10 |
Last Modified: | 01 Dec 2024 01:21 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26013-4 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41598-022-26013-4 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:195148 |