The Birthplace of Jousting Steeds

 From Science:

Excalibur and A Knight’s Tale got at least one thing right. Medieval English knights donned armor, mounted highly trained horses, and jousted with long lances in spectacular ritual combats. King Henry VIII was obsessed with jousting, until a 1536 spill from a horse during a tournament left him with traumatic injuries.

But the steeds used in these contests weren’t all home-grown, a new study finds. An analysis of dozens of medieval horses buried in an open field between the Thames River and Westminster Abbey reveals a far-flung European horse trading network, researchers report today in Science Advances, with some of the animals coming from as far away as northern Italy. The findings, experts say, open a new window into the life of medieval English elites and their favorite hobby.

“This paper’s enabling new stories to be told about these horses and the people who rode them,” says Richard Thomas, an archaeozoologist at the University of Leicester who was not part of the research.

Historical documents show England’s medieval elite took great interest in horses. A record of royal horses called the Equitium Regis, for example, lists hundreds of horses belonging to the royal family in the late 13th and early 14th century C.E., often by name and sometimes geographic origin. (Read more.)