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I work as an Associate Lecturer. When not teaching or walking, I research the of and and I'll post about that here. I've just finished writing my 'Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife', out in June and this month I have been working on a research project on pine trees and yew trees in , and a translation of an Scottish natural history text out of . 🌲📚

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If you traveled back 250-500 years what could you see near you? After a four year research project, I can tell you the answer in Britain and Ireland and it is quite exciting! (🐺​🐆​🐰​🦈​​🦐​🐍​)!

My Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife will be published in June, but I have special permission to share some of my findings before that, so I will be releasing one map each month here. Here is a list of previously released ones: historyandnature.wordpress.com

This is my #linocut of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), surrounded by plants & a mineral she touted as medical treatments, her invented alphabet & model of the universe. Her writings preserve not only her own knowledge & theories but the nature of institutional #medicine & folk healing of her day (which she deftly combined). While she might be best remembered today as a composer of 70 Gregorian chants & musical dramas… 🧵1/n

#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histSci #histMed #botany #MastoArt

I had a request from @LeafyHistory to help translate this text for their upcoming discussion group on the wolf in Japan. The 'dog Shogun' Tsunayoshi was something of an animal lover, and his Buddhist tendencies led to some extensive animal rights laws - even for wild animals!

Link: yobanashicafe.wordpress.com/20

#YobanashiCafé #Buddhism #JapaneseHistory #JapaneseLiterature #JapaneseBuddhism

According to my research, the Great Bustard was still pretty well recorded in Britain 250-500 years ago. It was hunted to extinction in the nineteenth century, but has since been reintroduced in Wiltshire.
I wonder if all the birds in the eastern Fen counties got soggy bums! - I don't think they are very waterproof birds! 😹​🦃
(Map from my Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife)​

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Shaligrams, the #sacred #fossils, are becoming rarer because of climate change theconversation.com/shaligrams

"For more than 2,000 years, #Hinduism, #Buddhism and the shamanic #Himalayan #religion of Bon have venerated #Shaligrams – ancient fossils of #ammonites, a class of #extinct sea creatures related to modern #squids... #ClimateChange, faster glacial melting, and gravel mining in the #KaliGandaki are changing the course of the river, which means fewer Shaligrams are appearing each year."

Three maps from my ATLAS OF EARLY MODERN WILDLIFE showing where wild animals were recorded in Britain and Ireland 250-500 years ago... :bunhdpeek:
I found loads of records of Pine Martens and Otters. So why no records of Beavers from early modern England..?
John Ray (1693) says 'These animals have been cut down by hunters all the way to the final extermination, and their stock in England and Wales is thoroughly extinct...'
Were they already gone?😿​

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It is in fact questioned by some authorities, wether even Mesolithic Europeans, were sailing out intoo deep waters, to catch offshore fish. (Pickard & Bonsell, 2004)

At European sites, inshore fishes greatly outnumber pelagic ones, although Thunnus, Scomber, Xiphias, and Belone turn up. I know from personal experience, that Belone and Scomber sometimes come quite inshore. The occurrences of the larger oceanic predators, Thunnus and Xiphias, are harder to explain without some offshore fishing.

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More new research from me published this month! :abunhdhappyhop:

This is a chapter in the edited volume 'Wolf: Culture, Nature, Heritage' (Boydell Press). My research examines the (vv old!) chancery records of England and found over 200 licences for hunting hares 🐰​, foxes 🦊​, badgers 🦡​, wildcats (🐱​!) and wolves (🐺​!!!) in 13th and 14th century England. The licences are specific so can be mapped like this!

Free copy available here: zenodo.org/record/8173432

No equivalent of 'quote tweeting' here, so to add to the post we've just shared: The Atlas of Early Modern Wildlife by @LeafyHistory looks like a fascinating read for anyone interested in the wildlife of their British or Irish #OnePlaceStudies in times gone by.

Hi everyone, today is the day my book, THE ATLAS OF EARLY MODERN WILDLIFE is published. 🙀💚

The Atlas catalogues the state of nature in Britain and Ireland during the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries. 🐺🦫🦅🦃🐳🐟🐢🐍🦞🦐

It's taken me five years to get to this point! The Atlas is based on over 10,000 records from 200+ primary sources (essentially books written in the time period)!

Ok finally career #introduction time!
I am a #DH #earlymodern Historian with preference of English and Irish History. I have specialized in the London Bills of Mortality on Death By Numbers. So basically I love medicine, death, and plague of early modern.

I received my MA from GMU, and worked with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM) where I discovered my love for mixing tech and history. I am post grad at a local library while I figure out what to research

Amateur naturalists still recorded wolves in the early modern period around Sutherland, and in the west of Ireland, but not England or Wales where they seem to have already gone extinct. 🐺​💔​

But of course, there are legends of wolves living much later than that, and in very different areas! And I have a bit of research coming out later this month which describes what happened when they went extinct in England :abunhdhappyhop:

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After the Norman Conquests in Britain and Ireland, Rabbits were commonly kept in artificial warrens for meat and fur. 🐇
By the period that I study (250-500 years ago) Rabbits were widespread in England. Strangely though, they still had a mainly coastal distribution around Scotland, Ireland and Wales until much later. :abunhdsadpat:
Map from my forthcoming book. :blobbunblush:

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250-500 years ago, I have found were recorded across Britain, but interestingly not Ireland. This is surprising because we normally consider frogs to be native in Ireland! 💚​

Frogs also seem to have been reintroduced to Orkney and the Isle of Man in this period. Unless someone made a mistake, this happened multiple times - it is possible there have been multiple waves of frog and on these smaller islands! 🐸​:blobwizard:

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The Burbot is a sinuous fish with chunky pectoral fins. It was never widespread in Britain and Ireland but I have collected records showing it was found in the east of England 250-500 years ago. It seems to have only gone extinct there around 1970!

In recent years there has been talk by the Norfolk Rivers Trust of reintroducing it, so perhaps it will be back soon!

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To catch up on why Google Scholar is a uniquely trans-exclusionary force in academia:

scholar.hasfailed.us

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Just back from the UCU picketline in Cardiff today. Here we are demonstrating the British Sign Language sign for "STRIKE", which can also mean "REVOLUTION" *hint hint* 😘

We are on strike against casual contracts, overwork, underpay and inequality. ✊

The frost is back to covering the mountain this week - I see the winter does not want to give up on Wales just yet! :bunhdcomfyhappy:

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