Join us in the first GIAP Seminar of 2024! Open event, no registration required.
January 18th 12h CET
‘Cattle through time: a long-term perspective on cattle husbandry in the Netherlands’
Dr. Maaike Groot
Freie Universität Berlin
Access the webinar here: https://bit.ly/GIAPseminars2024
Open event. No registration required. Hosted in Microsoft Teams (no Microsoft/Teams account needed).
Abstract:
From the Neolithic, cattle were the most important domestic species in the Netherlands. Today they are outnumbered by pigs and chickens, but cattle remain the quintessential farm animal and dairy cows especially are inseparable from the Dutch lowland landscape. A recent project reviewed cattle husbandry in the Netherlands from the Neolithic to the Early Middle Ages, including not just archaeozoological data but also archaeological and archaeobotanical evidence. The aim was to see how cattle husbandry and cattle mobility have changed over time.
Keywords:
Netherlands, cattle, long-term, stable isotope analysis, exploitation, mobility
About Dr. Groot:
Dr Maaike Groot is a lecturer archaeozoology at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD from VU University Amsterdam (2007 – Animals in ritual and economy in a Roman frontier community. Excavations in Tiel-Passewaaij). She has carried out post-doctoral projects in Amsterdam (2009-2012 – Livestock for sale: the effect of a market economy on rural communities in the Roman frontier zone), at the University of Basel (2013-2015 – comparing animal husbandry in the Roman Netherlands to that in Roman Switzerland) and at the University of Sheffield (2018-2019 – Mobility and management of cattle in Iron Age and Roman Netherlands). The latter project was then extended chronologically to a review of cattle husbandry in the Netherlands from the Neolithic to the Early Medieval period and the resulting monograph submitted as part of the requirements for a Habilitation at the Freie Universität Berlin.
While Maaike has focused on the Iron Age and Roman periods and the economic role of animals, she also has an interest in the social and ritual roles of animals and has recently worked on Neolithic and Bronze Age projects.
Links of interest:
- About Dr. Groot: https://www.maaikegroot.nl/
- Freie Universität Berlin:
- Website: https://www.fu-berlin.de/en/index.html
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/fu_berlin
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freieuniversitaetberlin/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fu_berlin/
Leaflet’s background picture: Small-scale surplus production: a farmer takes a cow to the market (drawing by M.H. Kriek).
