The History of Sheep Breeds in Britain

Abstract

object of the present paper is to give an introductory review of the sources of evidence that can be used in seeking the origin of British breeds of sheep. Older ideas are discussed in the light of recent evidence from new sources, and attempts are made throughout to synthesize evidence from documentary sources with that from new archaeological and biological techniques. The first part of the paper summarizes the evidence of sheep in Britain from the earliest times until the Middle Ages, but this phase is dealt with briefly because there is little evidence of breed type until after the medieval period. The first source of evidence on sheep ancestry comes from skeletal remains of the Neolithic period onwards, and the use of bones in this way has recently been extended into the Middle Ages. Representations of sheep, such as sculptures, are useful in the Near Eastern civilizations, but are scarce in northern Europe. From the Bronze Age onwards wool textiles have been preserved, and from about 500 b.c. sheepskin, leather, and eventually parchment (made from sheepskin) are preserved, too. Wool fibres remaining embedded in such material add to the knowledge gained from textiles. A parchment may have written records and painted miniatures of sheep on its surface, but the true history of the sheep lies within the parchment itself! Information gained from parchments and textiles has enabled the author to put forward elsewhere a hypothesis on the evolution of the fleece, and it constitutes the main new evidence in the first part of the paper, but few European parchments are available before the Middle Ages. European records begin in Roman times, but although husbandry is often adequately dealt with, descriptions of sheep are almost non-existent until the eighteenth century. So in the second part of the paper the approach is reversed and an attempt is made to trace back the ancestry of modern breeds to the sketchy records of the Middle Ages. In this, the distribution of different types of sheep at the end of the eighteenth century is used as the basis, together with evidence from other sources such as illustrations of sheep, and the blood types of modern breeds. It is postulated that there have been three main introductions of sheep into Britain. The first to arrive were probably of brown Soay type, and this type seems eventually to have given rise to the