Warhorse: The Archaeology of a Medieval Revolution?

Man in a brown jacket and white shirt standing against a stone wall, smiling at the camera.

The warhorse was - and remains - the signature animal of the Middle Ages. It was an unmistakable symbol of social status, an icon of aristocratic culture and a potent weapon on the battlefield. The development and military uses of warhorses have been intensively studied in the past, but somewhat curiously the archaeological evidence for these animals has often been overlooked or under-valued. The 'Warhorse' project (2019-2023) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council aimed to redress this imbalance by conducting the first ever systematic study of the full range of archaeological evidence for warhorses, and horses more generally, from medieval Britain.

'Warhorse' was a collaborative venture between the University of Exeter’s Department of Archaeology and UEA's Department of History and Art History with the central ambition to connect the study of medieval horses to broader social and landscape contexts from the late Anglo-Saxon to the early Tudor period (c. AD 800–1550) via a range of material evidence.

One of the characteristics of the project was its truly interdisciplinary nature, which brought together archaeological, historical and scientific approaches in three research strands.

The first involved the (re-)analysis of horse bones from archaeological excavations, which were subjected to cutting edge scientific techniques in order to find genetic evidence of where exactly animals were born and reared and how their working lives led to specific patterns of trauma that can be identified in their skeletal remains.

Person in blue gloves measures a large animal jawbone with calipers on a padded surface.

Person measuring a decorated medieval helmet with a caliper. The helmet features intricate red and gold designs on a brown surface.

Two hands pointing at handwritten text on an open, aged book, placed on a grid-patterned surface.

The second was more artefact based and comprised a comprehensive survey of surviving equine material culture, such as medieval horse gear and horse armour, the former comprising items such as decorative harness pendants that are often found by metal detectorists.

The project's third research strand (that undertaken at UEA) comprised the study of equine 'networks' and was based on the systematic exploitation of surviving royal records held by The National Archives at Kew.

This documentary material is a voluminous collection chiefly made up of the accounts of the various crown officials charged with breeding and training elite horses for the king's armies.

Aged manuscript with handwritten text in Latin, rolled at both ends, placed on a grid-patterned surface. A hand holds the bottom edge.

The records are often staggering in their detail, with information given on horse names, coat colours, diet, equipment, medicine and, crucially for the project, where horses were born, lived and died. These documents allowed the equine administration of the English kings to be revealed in detail for

the first time, not least in the production of the first ever map showing the royal stud network in the fourteenth century.

Map of England with red dots marking study sites, featuring topographical shading and a scale bar in the bottom right corner.

The results of the project have challenged our thinking in a number of ways. From an archaeological perspective, the year 1066 is less important than the image of the Norman knight charging into battle at Hastings seen on the Bayeux Tapestry would suggest. Instead, the warhorse and its decorative apparel developed incrementally from the late tenth century onwards and it was only by the 1150s that the iconic mounted knight and horse in full kit becomes fully visible. The project also confirmed the view that even the medieval warhorse was comparatively small compared to modern animals. All the archaeological evidence points to animals in the region of 15 hands at the most, with the majority standing at 13-14 hands high - so for 'warhorse' we need to think more polo pony than shire horse. And the idea that the Tudors - especially Henry VIII - rescued horse breeding from a medieval decline? While not completely untrue, we should be wary of Tudor propaganda. The evidence suggests that while Henry did much to re-establish the royal stud network, but he was in no way starting from scratch.

Rather, the key finding of the project was to establish how the image of the warhorse was successfully re-invented over the course of the Middle Ages to suit the changing priorities of the aristocrats who rode them.

The project generated a great deal of popular and media interest, and its work appeared on the front covers of both the BBC History Magazine and Current Archaeology in 2025. The project website remains live Warhorse | The Archaeology of a Medieval Revolution? and the project monograph (which also contains a huge number of wonderful colour illustrations) was published this year Medieval Warhorse | Home