Historical management of equine resources in France from the Iron Age to the Modern Period

Alongside horses, donkeys and their first-generation hybrids represent members of the Equidae family known for social, economic symbolic importance in protohistoric historical France. However, relative respective roles different regions time periods are difficult to assess based on textual, iconographic archaeological evidence. This is both due incomplete, partial scattered sources difficulties accurately assign fragmentary remains at proper taxonomic level. DNA-based methods, however, allow a robust identification status ancient equine osseous material from minimal sequence data. Here, we leveraged shallow DNA sequencing dedicated Zonkey computational pipeline obtain first baseline distribution mules France Iron Age Modern period. Our collection includes total 873 specimens spanning 128 sites comprising 717 100 donkeys, 55 single hinny individual. While horses were ubiquitous most dominant species identified, our dataset reveals mule breeding during Roman times, especially between 1st 3rd centuries CE (Common Era), where they represented 20.0% 34.2% assemblages. In contrast, almost absent northern assemblages whole period, but replaced rural urban commercial centers early Middle Ages. work also identified exceptional size Late Antiquity, which calls deep reassessment true morphological space past species. study confirmed general preference toward throughout all investigated revealed dynamic management strategies leveraging breadth resources various geographic temporal contexts.