dogs

The Box Office Bears team share some news about recent publications and the announcement of our forthcoming monograph, Box Office Bears: Bears and Baiting in Early Modern England.

We've been tracking bears in inns, arenas, and marketplaces, but they were also “presented” in royal residences and recreational spaces, including the distinguished Banqueting House.

What did pet dogs look like and how were they described?  Although the idea of a “pet” does not quite exist in this period, this list contains detailed descriptions of a wide range of Elizabethan dogs owned by men and women of the age.

Last year, we launched our prototype website with an animation about the fire of Nantwich in 1581 and what it meant for the town’s bears. This new post sees the Box Office Bears team discussing "where do animals belong in early modern England?"

This cranium, from excavations at the Davies’ Bear Garden on London’s Bankside, contains the story of the life and death of this individual dog, which we can recover through zooarchaeological analysis.

Part of the ‘Box Office Bears’ Project research includes ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis of the animals involved in the baiting themselves – namely bears and dogs. This image shows us sampling skeletal material for ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis, at the PalaeoBARN Laboratory at the University of Oxford.