Study finds some medieval Europeans ate horsemeat

People continued eating horse meat in some parts of medieval Europe even after converting to Christianity, an analysis in the journal Antiquity finds.

The findings challenge prevailing historical narratives that eating horse meat was considered barbaric or heretical at the time. The study looked at hippophagy, or the eating of horse meat, and analyzed archaeological evidence from 198 medieval Hungarian settlements, including several in what are now Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

Though it is not possible to identify the remains of horses from smaller feasts, the researchers analyzed the proportion of horse bones to other types of bones in archaeological refuse piles to determine whether horse meat made up a substantial part of the early medieval diet in Hungary.

Refuse from these sites shows an overall decline in horse remains through time. Horse meat eating, however, persisted for over two centuries before the Mongol invasion of 1241-42, and “by the mid-16th century Ottoman occupation, horse meat eating practically ceased in Hungary,” likely because horses were in high demand.

The invasion led to the destruction of most settlements in the Hungarian plains, and population decline and famine followed.

The existence of horse bones among medieval Hungarian garbage piles may reflect a Eurasian pastoral tradition, the researchers conclude. These customs survived conversion to Christianity but vanished after the Mongol invasion.

Since the proportion of horse bones in a quarter of the largest assemblages studied exceeds 10 %, the researchers write, a religious ban on eating horses in medieval Hungary was “unlikely.”

The Mongol invasion seems to have made eating pigs and cows more the norm, accelerating the decline of horse meat meals in Hungary.