The late Middle Ages was a period of changes in England. The decline of the population and the desertion of vast areas of the countryside caused by the Black Death of the 14th century brought about a slow transformation of society and its economy. Farming and pastoral activities were much affected and gradual modifications in the cultivation of the land and the use of animals eventually led to that set of changes in agrarian practices usually called the “agricultural revolution”(sensu Kerridge 1967). These phenomena have for a long time been studied by social and agricultural historians but archaeology has also made a contribution.“The archaeologists have accumulated a mass of information, almost embarrassing in its sheer quantity, for the physical conditions of the past...”(Dyer 1989a, 3), but unfortunately this large bank ofdata is not easily accessible, hidden in large numbers of “site reports” and even more often never published. Data concerning agricultural life are mainly discussed in sections or appendices on human bones, animal bones and plant remains, which may be difficult to read for the non-specialist, and are often poorly integrated in the general interpretation of a site, let alone a wider geographic area. Fortunately a few syntheses have been made (see for instance Grant 1988 and Greig 1988), but there is still much to be done.

This paper aims to be a contribution in that direction. During the last ten years new archaeological evidence about changes in the use of animals in late medieval and early modem times has come to light. This evidence seems to confirm and complement what historians have been saying and it is, in this respect, most important. We have now direct archaeological indication that, probably since the 15th century and maybe earlier, the emphasis in the kind of use of the main domestic animals was in a process of transformation. The aim of this paper is to review our evidence for these innovations and to see how they contributed towards the creation of a new system of animal exploitation. Here I shall rely upon the infor-