Urban Animals: Human-Poultry Relationships in Later Post-Medieval Belfast

Abstract

Live animals were a ubiquitous feature of post-medieval cities and provided a variety of products to a broad cross-section of society. Poultry species were portable and accessible to people of modest means. Yet, the quotidian presence of poultry contrasts with the lack of attention to urban animal husbandry. Zooarchaeological data from the faunal assemblage from St. Anne’s Square, a 0.77 ha seventeenth to early twentieth-century site in Belfast, combined with historical legislation, court records, and news sheets held by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland reveal the complexity of and contradictions implicit in poultry-human relationships in Belfast and nearby areas.