Nominated for Current Archaeology Book of the Year 2026
The image of the armoured knight mounted on his charging warhorse is one of the most evocative of the Middle Ages. As distinctive symbols of social status, horses were central to the medieval aristocratic image and closely bound up with concepts of knighthood and chivalry, while as weapons of war bred for size, strength and stamina, they changed the face of battle.
Drawing upon new interdisciplinary research, this volume presents a fresh perspective on warhorses, and medieval horses generally, in Britain, understood within its wider European context. It adopts an integrated approach that covers the full array of evidence for medieval horses, from their physical remains (bones, teeth and DNA), equipment and armour, through to visual sources such as sculpture and wall paintings, and documentary and landscape evidence for the environments in which they were bred and trained. Analyses of these sources of information are first presented individually, and then integrated and cross-compared with the historical record to present a new chronology of horse stature, conformation and appearance and to generate new understandings of the changing place of the horse in the medieval world.
