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Boomtown Rats: Ancient Rodent Bones from York as Markers of Urbanisation

Dr David Orton

• 25 September 2015
  5.30pm-5.50pm

• Barley Hall (map)

• FREE admission
  No booking required

• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

The black rat, Rattus rattus, is well-known as a historical pest, ubiquitous in Europe’s medieval cities. Fewer people realise that it isn’t native to Europe and can’t survive in our climate without the food and shelter provided by dense human settlements. The presence of black rats is thus a marker both of urbanisation and of trade contacts. In York, rats disappear at the end of the Roman period, before remerging in Viking Jorvik.

In this talk David will start with a potted history of the black rat’s spread across Europe, as currently understood, before presenting a new pilot collaborative project between the University and York Archaeological Trust.  We are applying a combination of 3D-shape analysis and genetics to rat bones from Roman and Viking-Age sites in York, in order to understand said rodents’ origins and adaptations.