DOI: 10.1525/ah.2026.154 ISSN: 2998-3673
Interdisciplinary Conversations in Equine History
Kathryn RentonInnovative research relevant to the history of horses and other equids has emerged in the last 25 years across the fields of ethology, multispecies ethnography, archaeology, and environmental studies. This essay maps the methodological innovations and findings from these fields that are revising standard views of equine sociality, interspecies communication, and domestication relationships. Embodiment emerges as a central site of interspecies knowledge production and nontextual access to equine experience, while critiques of the categories of wild, domestic, and feral emphasize the contributions of historical methods to these interdisciplinary conversations around the lives of horses as historical subjects.