Rabbits, Warrens and Archaeology

Rabbit farming was a major industry in medieval and post-medieval Britain and has left extensive archaeological traces in the form of warren boundaries, enclosures, lodges, traps and 'pillow mounds' - that is, the distinctive carthworks constructed to provide accommodation for the rabbits.

This volume provides a comprehensive discussion of these important remains, and describes those parts of the country in which, in the course of the post-medieval period, extensive tracts of ground came to be occupied by rabbit farms, creating distinctive landscapes of warrening'. But it also discusses, in some detail, the many ways in which the archaeological remains left by warrening have confused archaeologists over the years. Pillow mounds, in particular, have been repeatedly misinterpreted as prehistoric or Roman buildings, funerary monuments, or 'ritual structures', in part because warrens were often located within areas of early settlement. In addition, it discusses the symbolic significance of rabbit warrens, and the ways in which they were incorporated within the designed landscapes, laid out around elite residences. Rabbit warrens loomed large in the social as well as the economic and agrarian world of our ancestors, but have been sadly neglected by archaeologists. This book places them firmly on the archaeological map.