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Introduction
In October, 1981, at the instigation of Dr David
E. Davis of California, a small group of
archaeozoologists and one historian met at the
Natural History Museum, London, in order to
review what was then known concerning the
distribution of Rattus rattus in medieval Britain. This event proved particularly stimulating
(Twigg 1984: preface), and rekindled interest in
the subject, especially the question of the rats
presence in Britain before the medieval period;
a possibility raised by the discovery of their skeletal remains in a Roman well in York (Rackham
1979).It was the conclusion of the group that the
York rats were unlikely to be an isolated phenomenon, an observation demonstrated two
years later (in 1983) when further Roman rat
bones (FIGURE
1)were recovered by Museum of
London archaeologists (directed by Fredericke
Hammer and Ken Steedman) from a securely
dated 3rd-century well fill at Fenchurch Street
in the City of London.
Discovery of the Fenchurch Street black rat
remains prompted Barbara West and myself
(both then employed by the Museum of London) to collaborate in investigating their wider
signifiance. West gathered together published
and unpublished archaeological records of R.
rattus in Britain, and drew up a provisional historical distribution map, while I collated archaeological records from Europe and further afield to
see how the black rat spread from its presumed
homeland in southern Asia to northern Europe
during the Roman era (Armitage et al. 1984).
* 1972 Roseate Lane, Sanibel Island FL 33957, USA.
ANTIQUITY
68 (1994): 231-40
232
PHILIP L. ARMITAGE
FIGURE
1.Right lower jawbone of black rat Rattus rattus. Roman well, Fenchurch, City of London.
Excavated 1983. Specimen is incomplete, with the vertical ramus missing (broken in antiquity). (Photo
TJ. Hurst/Museum of London.)
233
234
PHILIP L. ARMITAGE
235
traders during this same period (8th-10th century) also probably were responsible for first
introducing black rats into eastern and southern Africa, as evidenced by R. rattus bones
found at Pont Drift, northern Transvaal, and
Ndondondwane, Natal (Plug & Dippenaar 1979:
8 2 ; Voigt & von den Driesch 1984: 100).
There is zooarchaeological evidence for the
passage of black rats along either or both of the
major Viking trade routes during the 9th century. The seaport of Birka in Sweden, during
this period, served as the key Baltic trading
settlement, the main destination of goods
brought to Scandinavia from Byzantium and
the Islamic east (Graham-Campbell & Kidd
1980: 45). Excavations in Birka yielded skeletal remains of R. rattus from levels dated 800900 AD (Lepiksaar referred to in de Bruyn 1981:
64). Once in Birka, rats had an opportunity of
crossing the sea westwards to York, and other
English east-coast ports. Given that these Viking trade routes also reached Ireland, there is
an inexplicable lack of evidence for R. rattus
there: no rat bones were found by McCormick
in the large samples of faunal material from
loth- to 11th-century levels in Viking Dublin,
or from the 11th-century urban site at Waterford (McCormick pers. comm. 1992). Only in
the Early Christian level at Ruthmullan, a
raised rath site on the coast in County Down
(Lynn 1982: 154), does R. rattus appear in Ireland prior to the Norman occupation of AD 1169
(McCormick 1991).
An equally inexplicable absence occurs at
the important early medieval emporium of
Dorestad (present day Duurstede in the Netherlands) and at the flourishing Anglo-Saxon
trading settlement of Hamwic (early medieval
Southampton) (Prummel 1983: 245-6). These
settlements pre-date the Viking trade with Byzantium and the Islamic east, yet reappraisal
of northern maritime history shows the possibility of an earlier reintroduction of this rodent
species. Haywood (1991) sees that the capabilities of the pre-Viking Germanic seafarers
[have] been underestimated. In fact, Frankish
naval forces were employed widely from the
late 7th-late 8th centuries: on inland waterways in support of military operations against
the Slavs, Saxons and Avars; on the open seas,
in the western Mediterranean campaigning
against Muslim pirates from Spain and Africa,
and as far east as the Adriatic fighting against
236
PHILIP L. ARMITAGE
Byzantium for control of Venice. All this naval activity in the Mediterranean must surely
have provided some opportunity for rats to be
transported into northern Europe in Frankish
vessels returning home. Before its destruction
by raiding Vikings in AD 863, Dorestad was the
principal centre of activity of Friesian commerce in western Europe; it continued as an
important trading settlement under Frankish
control throughout the late 8th/early 9th century (see Loyn 1962: 82-3). Had Frankish warships brought rats from the Mediterranean, they
should have been present in Dorestad, from
where they could have spread to York, Hamwic,
London and other English trading settlements.
Part of the answer may be found in the organization of the Frankish fleets, if those operating
in the Mediterranean sailed from ports along
the southern coast of the Frankish Kingdom,
isolated from those stationed in the North Sea.
Frankish seafaring activity in the Mediterranean was essentially naval rather than commercial; as Lewis (1958: 243) observed, the
world of the Carolingians faced north rather
than south. . . . Its economic centre also was
moving to the northeast towards Germany.
Regional disputes and fragmentation in
Carolingian France had by AD 900 resulted in
the economy of Poitou, the Seine and the interior of Picardy [becoming] essentially local
in nature , , . and almost no commerce existed
between [these regions] and the Mediterranean
(Lewis 1958: 294). The internal isolation of
much of France probably explains the late reintroduction of R. rattus which seems to have
been no earlier than the 11th century, some two
centuries after its reappearance in Britain: in
this connection, the 11th-century record of
black rat from the monastic site at La CharitBsur-Loire (the earliest for medieval France) is
of significance (Audoin-Rouzeau 1986: 44).
In marked contrast, 9th-century England
seems to have maintained contact with the Mediterranean, and by the loth century there was
considerable commerce between the two regions.
Italian merchants traded in England, whose own
merchants, in turn, visited Italy (see Lewis 1958:
299,301,305).Thismay explainthelate 10th-century record of R. m f f u s in London, an immature
tibia at St Magnus in the City (Annitage 1979).
Opportunities for rats to spread from the
Mediterranean to northern Europe were greatly
facilitated from the 11th century onward when
the Normans extended their sphere of influence into the Mediterranean, opening again the
old Roman commerce routes, including the
important RhGne-Rhine route. Throughout
western Europe, phenomenal human population growth in the High Medieval period (11th13th centuries) provided optimal conditions for
proliferation of rats. Larger populations, rising
rural prosperity and resurgent international
trade precipitated a remarkable phase in urban
expansion (Butler 1975; Platt 1976: 21).
All this would have favoured rat infestation,
and the archaeological record is beginning to
confirm that R. rattus did extend its geographic
range throughout northern Europe. Rat remains
at Abingdon, Ascot Doilly, Tetsworth, Exeter,
Reigate, Middleton Stoney, Stamford, South
Witham, Ludgershall, York, Kilton Castle and
Lincoln (West in Armitage et al. 1984) indicate that in Britain R. rattus was well established by the High Medieval period. Giraldus
Cambrensis reference i n Itinerarium Kamberiae of c. 1191 AD (Public Record Office 1868:
111)further shows that rats had spread as far
westwards as Wales, thereby re-establishing
their Roman distribution pattern.
Morphological changes and the Little Ice Age
Workers in the early 1980s noticed the extraordinarily large size apparent in later medieval/
early Tudor rat bones from British archaeological sites. It seemed that modern black rats were
smaller. This size difference may have arisen
out of the lack of interspecific competition: R.
rattus entering northern Europe in medieval
times found an unoccupied niche for, until the
introduction of R. norvegicus sometime in the
early 18th century, it enjoyed an exclusive opportunity to exploit the food resources and
harbourage of human settlements. Without rival rodent species or any real threat from humans (whose eradication measures were largely
ineffectual), R. rattus was, by this model, able
to attain full optimal body size.
Another factor worthy of consideration is
linked to Bergmanns ecogeographical rule
(Mayr 1963: 318-21). Was the spread of this
sub-tropical rodent into cooler and wetter
northern latitudes accompanied by adaptive
physiological and morphological changes?
Coat colour adaptations
Marked changes in the original wild-type
237
PHILIP L. ARMITAGE
238
date
no.
specimens
SD
reference
37.0
34.9-39.8
southwest Florida
(climate: subtropical)
33
34.3
30.4-36.8
1.65
Armitage (1993)
32.4
31.4-33.5
City of London
modern
If many rats perished from the cold, the population was greatly depleted in Britain, and possibly throughout northern Europe (Twigg 1984;
Davis 1986) as is supported by archaeological
records for R. rattus in Britain (West in Armitage
et al. 1984: 381, figure 6) which show a peak in
the 13th century followed by a sharp and continuous decline from the 14th to 18th centuries.
On the continent, Audoin & Vigne (in press) suggest that rats were much more abundant than
non-commensal small mammals (voles, wood
mouse etc.) in European towns until the time of
the Black Death, after which there was a re-colonization of the towns by both non-commensals
and wild vegetation, particularly in the late 14th15th centuries.
Conclusions
The black rat is the quintessential example of a
mammalian commensal weed species that has
thriven due to its opportunistic lifestyle, and
spread globally by its close, unwelcome association with mankind. By combining historical and
new archaeological evidence it is becoming possible to chart in fine as well as in broad scale this
geographic range extension. Such studies reveal
that the story of the black rat mirrors closely the
ebb and flow of human endeavours. Its dispersion from the original homeland in southeast Asia
was dynamic, with long-distance range extension, then contraction regionally, often leading
to localized extinction, followed later by re-invasion and re-colonization. In Britain the emerging picture is of rolling introductions and
constant population changes, long-term viability very much dependent on regular topping up
by immigrants brought in by shipping. Viewed
over the centuries, the survival pattern of the
black rat population in Britain has been fine-
239
OConnor (University of Bradford) for his helpful comments during the preparation of this paper. Sincere thanks
also go to the following colleagues for their generous contributions to this project: Robert Kruszynski (British Museum: Natural History), Finbar McCormick (Queens
University Belfast), Peter Brimblecombe (University of East
Anglia), Jean-Denis Vigne (Museum National dHistoire
Naturelle, Paris) and Frederique Audoin-Rouzeau (Paris),
Achilles Gautier (University of Gent) and Anton Ervynck
(Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish
Community, Belgium).
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