Archaeologists from the University of Nottingham have played an integral part in a collaborative study that provides a model for identifying archaeological bear baiting assemblages in England and beyond.
The study, which is published in the journal Antiquity, has brought together zooarchaeological, stable isotope and archival evidence from nine archaeological sites in Bankside, London, to define features specific to bear baiting.
Animal baiting – a horrific blood sport which involved the pitting of dogs against other animals such as bulls and bears for public entertainment – was an incredibly popular and culturally important form of entertainment in Shakespearian times. In London, baiting took place from c.1540 to 1682 in formalised arenas on Bankside in Southwark, which was a key early modern entertainment hub.
The research forms part of the Box Office Bears: Animal Baiting in Early Modern England project, a UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project, exploring the widespread, surprising, and sometimes alarming recreational interactions between humans and animals in early modern England.
Hannah O'Regan, Professor of Archaeology and Palaeoecology in the Department of Classics and Archaeology, who led the research team, said: "We're really excited to be sharing our findings on the Box Office Bears project. We've brought together a truly interdisciplinary team from theatre studies to ancient DNA to examine a practice that has largely been ignored.
It's a hugely unpleasant topic, but understanding baiting is critical to understanding performance in Shakespeare's England. The people who went to watch King Lear and Hamlet, would also have popped into the arenas to see a baiting. They saw no difference between the practices, and indeed baiting terminology, and even the bears themselves are threaded throughout early modern plays."
The zooarchaeological research was led by Dr Lizzie Wright of the University of York – formerly of the University of Nottingham – with colleagues from Nottingham's Department of Classics and Archaeology, the British Geological Survey, Pre-Construct Archaeology, and the Universities of Roehampton, Oxford, York, Cardiff and Southampton. The animal remains were made available for study by the Museum of London and project partners MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology).
Dr Wright, said: "It was an amazing opportunity to be able to study these really unique remains from early modern baiting sites and the results have been really fascinating. We now know much more about the practice of baiting and the animals that were involved."
Using an interdisciplinary approach to gather evidence, the research team were able to examine what species were present on Bankside and use this evidence to learn about the lives and deaths of the animals. They demonstrated that both dogs and bears lived on Bankside and were eating the remains of old horses, as well as each other. The dogs were particularly large – some 60-80cm high at the shoulder (large modern German Shepherd – Great Dane). This size of dog was uncommon across England at the time, suggesting these big dogs known as 'mastiffs' were particularly used for baiting.
Results also revealed there was no evidence for bears below the age of four years, which leads to the intriguing question of why not? Given they were likely to have been captured as cubs, they perhaps were used for dancing or on stage prior to being baited. A bear was a very expensive item – roughly eight times the cost of a horse – so their owners would not have wanted them to die as their replacements would have to be imported from overseas. The same may also be true of the dogs, as although some were found with bone fractures, their injuries had healed indicating they survived for at least six or more weeks after being wounded.
Dr Callan Davies at the University of Southampton who led the archival research, added: "This article allowed us to put fascinating archival details – from early writing on dog breeds to lists of celebrity bear names – into conversation with the physical presence of these extraordinary animals. It's exciting to consider the potential for this kind of interdisciplinary research around the history of entertainment."
Animal baiting was finally banned in England in 1835 and while the idea of such deliberate animal cruelty is now hugely distasteful, it was a very popular entertainment in its time. There has been little study of the practice, but it deserves attention as an integral part of early modern entertainment and as an insight into changing human-animal relationships over the last 500 years.
Although Bankside is unique in the wealth of documentary archives associated with it, baiting is known to have occurred widely elsewhere. This new model for data analysis enables researchers to either identify or exclude bear baiting when examining zooarchaeological assemblages – even where accompanying documentation is lacking – and can be expanded to other countries where baiting took place.
