UCC researcher awarded €2m for project on history of commercial cattle

A University College Cork (UCC) researcher has been awarded €2m for a project that will investigate the history of commercial cattle in Europe.

Dr Eugene Costello’s project will receive a €2m European research council consolidator grant to explore how commercial cattle farming emerged.

The research is expected to break new ground by tracing the early foundations of Europe’s commercial meat and dairy industries.

The project aims to uncover the pre-industrial roots of commercial cattle farming, an industry UCC said reshaped Europe’s landscapes and evolved into a major force in the global food economy.

Uncovering origins

Today, beef and dairy industries shape economies and environments across the world, yet their early development remains poorly understood, UCC said.

The five-year project will examine how beef and dairy production intensified from around 1240 to 1840.

Researchers will trace how market-focused cattle farming emerged, how it fuelled the growth of towns and trade networks and how rising demand reshaped the daily lives and landscapes of rural communities.

Dr Costello, the principal investigator, has called the project 'DeepCattle: The Deep History of Commercial Cattle Farming in Europe'.

An archaeologist and historian in UCC’s school of history and radical humanities laboratory, Dr Costello said the funding gives the research team the chance to show how a major global industry took shape long before the modern era.

“By combining evidence from history, archaeology and environmental science, we will be able to uncover the roots of commercial cattle farming and reveal how it has shaped the environment and economy of Europe,” he said.

Landscape

Researchers will use a landscape-based approach, with detailed case studies in Ireland, Scotland and Sweden, with added comparisons from the Alps and Hungary.

This will allow the team to explore cattle farming in a range of environmental and social contexts and include both beef and dairy systems.

One strand of work will use archival manuscripts, historic maps, remote sensing and archaeological fieldwork to identify changes in cattle- and land-management practices.

Another will assess how expanding cattle grazing affected rural habitats and biodiversity, using pollen analysis and sedimentary DNA.

A third strand will analyse historic routeways and trade data to trace how increasing amounts of cattle, butter and cheese were moved from rural areas to emerging urban centres, quite literally feeding their growth.

“This project will upend how we view Europe’s economic growth, particularly the rise of its great cities.

“It will push the focus outwards, investigating the role of supposedly peripheral rural communities in fuelling urban growth and the costs for them of doing so.

“We will highlight the fallout of rising urban demands for meat and dairy, demonstrating how the intensification of cattle farming transformed rural society and biodiversity,” he said.