Dr Richard Thomas

Reader in Archaeology

Tel: +44 (0)116 252 3343

Personal details

BA, PhD (Birmingham), FLS, FSA, SFHEA

I read Ancient History and Archaeology at Birmingham University (1995-1998) and embarked on a PhD at Birmingham, studying diet, agriculture, and human-animal relations in late medieval and early modern England.

I joined the School as Lecturer in Archaeology in September 2003 and was promoted to Reader in 2014.

Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London
Fellow of the Linnean Society of London
Chair of the Association for Environmental Archaeology (2014-2017)
International Committee member of the International Council for ArchaeoZoology (ICAZ) (2014-present)
Associate Editor for the International Journal of Paleopathology

Website

Academia list of publications

Teaching

I teach at all three levels of undergraduate study to both campus-based and distance learning students and postgraduate taught students. I am co-director of the Bradgate Park Fieldschool.

Media

BBCOne: Attenborough and the Giant Elephant (2017)

CBC: Jumbo: The Life of an Elephant Superstar (2017)

Radio4: Natural Histories: cow (2017)

BBCTwo: Horizon: 70 million animal mummies (2015)

Channel4: Richard III: the new evidence (2014)

PBS: Resurrecting Richard III (2014)

Publications

Colonese A.C., Lucquin, A., Guedes, E.P., Thomas, R., Best, J., Fothergill, B. T., Sykes, N., Foster, A., Miller, H., Poole, K., Maltby, M., Von Tesch, M. and Craig, O. 2017. The identification of poultry processing in archaeological ceramic vessels using in-situ isotope references for organic residue analysis. Journal of Archaeological Science 78: 179-192

Lawler, D.F., Widga, C. W., Rubin, D. A., Reetz, J., Leib, D., Evans, R. H., Tangredi, B. P., Thomas, R. M., Martin, T., Hildebolt, C., Smith, K., Sackman, J. E., Avery, J. G., Siegel, M., Smith, G.K. 2016. Differential diagnosis of curved vertebral spinous processes in archaeological domestic dog remains. Journal of Archaeological Science Reports 9: 54-63

Lloveras, L., Maroto, J., Soler, J., Thomas, R., Nadal, J., Moreno-García, M., and Soler, N. 2016. The role of small prey on hominid subsistence strategies from Early Upper Palaeolithic sites. The rabbits from the evolved Aurignacian level of Arbreda Cave. Journal of Quaternary Science 31: 458-471. DOI: 10.1002/jqs.2869

Lloveras, L., Thomas, R., Cosso, A., Pinyol, C., and Nadal, J. early view. When wildcats feed on rabbits: an experimental study to understand the taphonomic signature of European wildcats (Felis silvestris silvestris). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

Sykes, N., Ayton, G., Bowen, F., Baker, K., Baker, P., Carden, R. F., Dicken, C., Evans, J., Hoelzelb, A. R., Higham, T., Jones, R., Lamb, A., Liddiard, R., Madgwick, M., Miller, H., Rainsford, C., Sawyer, P., Thomas, R., Ward, C., Worley, F. 2016. Wild to domestic and back again: the dynamics of fallow deer management in medieval England. STAR: Science & Technology of Archaeological Research 2: 113-126.

Thomas, R. 2017. The zooarchaeology of animal ‘care’, pp. 169-188, in Powell, L., Southwell-Wright, W., and Gowland, R. (eds.), Care in the Past: Archaeological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Thomas, R., Sadler, P. and Cooper, J. 2016. Developmental osteology of cross-bred red junglefowl (Gallus gallus L. 1758) and the Implications for Ageing Chickens from Archaeological Sites. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 26: 176-188.

Tourigny, E., Thomas, R., Guiry, E., Earp, R., Allen, A., Rothenberger, J., and Lawler, D. 2016. An osteobiography of a 19^th-century dog from Toronto, Canada. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 26: 818–829.

Research

My teaching and research interests focus on the study of animal bones as a means of understanding past human-animal relationships (see the Bone Laboratory website).

My research has two main strands:

the reconstruction of past human-animal relationships, predominantly in the historic period
palaeopathology – the study of animal health and disease in the past

Reconstruction of past human-animal relationships

Within this general arena, I'm primarily interested in enriching our understanding of agricultural practice, diet, and human attitudes to animals within the historic period through the integration of zooarchaeological evidence and documentary sources.

My research has broken new ground in a number of areas.

I have contributed to a key historical debate concerning the timing and nature of the Agricultural Revolution. The impact of the Black Death has also been one of my key research themes. By bringing together zooarchaeological and documentary evidence, I managed to shed new light on the impact of the Black Death and the subsequent breakdown of feudal structures on agriculture, diet and hunting.

Similar themes have formed the basis of my research within the Roman period, in particular exploring the way in which the Roman army was provisioned in the first generation following the conquest of Britain.

Animal palaeopathology

In 1999, I co-founded the ICAZ Animal Palaeopathology Working Group (APWG) to foster international collaborative research and multi-disciplinary discussion relating to the study of past animal health and disease and improve the theoretical and methodological foundation of the subject.

My personal research within this field has

highlighted the research potential of the field within and beyond archaeology
improved the methodological foundation of the subject
presented the analysis of palaeopathological evidence from archaeological sites to improve our understanding of past human-animal relationships
improved our understanding of the archaeological significance of certain types of pathologies through the analysis of modern known-history populations

I'm currently Associate Editor for the International Journal of Paleopathology.

Recent grants

2017: Feeding Anglo-Saxon England: The Bioarchaeology of an Agricultural Revolution (ERC, $1.94 million, CI)
2016: Going Places: Empowering Women, Enhancing Heritage and Increasing Chicken Production in Ethiopia (AHRC, £225k, CI)
2014: Cultural and Scientific Perceptions of Human-Chicken Interactions (AHRC, £1.94 miliion, CI)

Supervision

I'm happy to supervise PhDs in the following areas:

Zooarchaeology
Past human-animal relationships
Animal palaeopathology
Food as material culture

You can learn more about studying for a PhD with us online.

Current students

Emily Banfield: Animals and ontologies in Neolithic long barrows
Nora Batterman: Revealing Reynard: 10,000 years of human-fox interactions
Lauren Bellis: A Dog’s life: an interdisciplinary study of changing human-animal relationships in Roman Britain
Alison Foster: Identifying chicken breeds in the archaeological record
Rebecca Kibble: Multi-scale spatial analysis of zooarchaeological data using GIS
Rachel Small: Food, identity and humoral theory in early modern England: a case study from Leicestershire

Past students

Judith Porcasi: Subsistence in palaeocoastal California
Stephanie Vann: A generic recording system for animal palaeopathology
Matilda Holmes: Food and status in the Saxon and Scandinavian burhs
Brooklynne Fothergill: The bird of the next dawn: the husbandry, transformation and translocation of the turrkey
Rebecca Gordon: Feeding the city: zooarchaeological evidence for urban provisioning (1550-1900 AD)
Meghann Mahoney: Diet and provisioning in Roman small towns: a case study from Ashton, Northamptonshire
Eric Tourigny: Upper Canada foodways: an analysis of faunal remains recovered from urban household and rural farmstead sites in the area of York (Toronto), AD 1794-1900.