It considers the progress towards the domestication of meat animals after the last ice age and the importance of domestic animals for their meat and other products in the development of the early civilisations, and looks at the part played by the meat trade in relation to the growth of urbanisation and the marketing structures that emerged.
DERRICK RIXSON, following a career as a family butcher, joined the staff of Smithfield College, London, where he taught for 25 years. Latterly he has been involved in zooarchaeology, processing bones from archaeological sites, and is the author or several other books.
Contents
- Introduction
- The Palaeolithic origins of butchery
- From hunter-gatherers to farmers
- The earliest civilisations
- Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire
- Meat trading in the Anglo-Saxon period
- The middle ages trading boom
- The rise of the Guild Merchant and Craft Guilds
- A profile of the urban meat trade
- Markets and fairs
- Medieval statutory and other controls of meat trading
- Standing of the Guilds and their function: 1550-1750
- Meat consumers and meat consumption: 1550 – 1750
- Meat supplies and marketing
- Statutory and other controls of meat trading: 1550 – 1750
- Developments in livestock farming: 1750 – 1914
- Slaughter of animals, meat cuts and meat quality
- Meat preservation
- The end of Smithfield livestock market and long distance droving
- Shipping live animals for slaughter
- Trade in carcase meat
- The changing nature of the meat trade during the 19th century
- Meat inspection and the sale of unfit meat
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index