Unwelcome companions:

ancient rats reviewed

PHILIPL. ARMITAGE
The commensal rats - notably the black rat Rattus rattus and the brown R. norvegicus are among mankinds most destructive and dangerous enemies, and have spread relentlessly with humans across the globe. A decade after an important ratty meeting at the
Natural History Museum, London, in 1981, this noxious rodent pest is again reviewed.
This paper is submitted in honour of Juliet Clutton-Brock (Natural History Museum, London).

Introduction
In October, 1981, at the instigation of Dr David
E. Davis of California, a small group of
archaeozoologists and one historian met at the
Natural History Museum, London, in order to
review what was then known concerning the
distribution of Rattus rattus in medieval Britain. This event proved particularly stimulating
(Twigg 1984: preface), and rekindled interest in
the subject, especially the question of the rats
presence in Britain before the medieval period;
a possibility raised by the discovery of their skeletal remains in a Roman well in York (Rackham
1979).It was the conclusion of the group that the
York rats were unlikely to be an isolated phenomenon, an observation demonstrated two
years later (in 1983) when further Roman rat
bones (FIGURE
1)were recovered by Museum of
London archaeologists (directed by Fredericke
Hammer and Ken Steedman) from a securely
dated 3rd-century well fill at Fenchurch Street
in the City of London.
Discovery of the Fenchurch Street black rat
remains prompted Barbara West and myself
(both then employed by the Museum of London) to collaborate in investigating their wider
signifiance. West gathered together published
and unpublished archaeological records of R.
rattus in Britain, and drew up a provisional historical distribution map, while I collated archaeological records from Europe and further afield to
see how the black rat spread from its presumed
homeland in southern Asia to northern Europe
during the Roman era (Armitage et al. 1984).
* 1972 Roseate Lane, Sanibel Island FL 33957, USA.
ANTIQUITY
68 (1994): 231-40

Further reports of early European rats came

from Roman sites in central Europe (Teichert
1985), from 2nd-century BC Menorca (Spain)
(Reumer 1986), from Roman York (OConnor
1988b) and from Picardie (northern France),
where Vigne & Femolant (1991) found black
rat as early as the 1st century AD.
As OConnor (1991: 318) noted, in just over
a decade, then, archaeozoologists in Britain and
on the continent have largely rewritten the
early history of R. rattus. But despite this advance our knowledge is still incomplete; and
this paper reviews chronology and pattern in
the spread of R. rattus, identifying where information is either patchy or lacking. Among
the prioirity areas meriting further study are:
1 The pre-Roman spread of R. rattus from
southeast Asia;
2 The apparent extinction in Dark Age northern Europe of R. rattus;
3 The reintroduction into northern Europe of
R. rclttus c. late 9th century/early l o t h
century;
4 The apparent extraordinary large size of R.
rattus in northern Europe during the later
medieval period.
Evidence for the pre-Roman spread of Rattus
rattus from southeast Asia
Among responses to Armitage et al. (1984) was
the observation that I had neglected evidence
for black rats moving from southeast Asia much
earlier than the 4th century BC. In my original
(tentative) model I had suggested the develop-

232

PHILIP L. ARMITAGE

FIGURE
1.Right lower jawbone of black rat Rattus rattus. Roman well, Fenchurch, City of London.
Excavated 1983. Specimen is incomplete, with the vertical ramus missing (broken in antiquity). (Photo
TJ. Hurst/Museum of London.)

ing of maritime trade between Egypt and India

during the Ptolemaic (323-30 BC) and Roman/
Coptic (50 BC-AD 641) periods as allowing rats
to spread from their southeast Asian homelands,
with a peak dispersal during the 2nd century AD
when Eurasian (Roman/Greek-ArabIndian) economic and cultural contact reached its height
(Barraclough 1989: 70). By this model, the principal entry route into the Mediterranean - and
eventually Europe -was via the Red Sea through
the entrepot of Alexandria.
Expanding knowledge of ancient trade and
zooarchaeological evidence make it necessary
to revise this model. We now know of an extensive maritime trade network operating between the Harappan a n d Mesopotamian
civilizations as early as the 2nd millennium
BC (Neyland 1992), with much commerce being handled by middlemen merchants from
Dilmun (modern Bahrain and Failaka located
in the Persian Gulf). Such long-distance seatrade became feasible with the innovative development of plank-built watercraft, equipped
with a single central mast supporting a sail of
woven rushes or cloth. In such vessels rats
could have been unwittingly transported direct from the northwest Indian coast to ports
in the Persian Gulf. Indeed, evidence of their
early presence in the Near East has come from
Tell I S a Bahriyat, Iraq, in levels dated c. 1500
BC (Boessneck & Ziegler 1987). Having then
invaded Mesopotamia, black rats could have

been further transported, again unwittingly,

along the extensive overland trade routes
(Oliphant 1992: 20) southwards into Egypt or
northwards through the Levant into Asia Minor,
thence, at a later date, via the maritime commerce
routes throughout the Mediterranean littoral, and,
later still, via the RhBne-Rhine trade route into
southern and northern Europe.
In this revised model, ancestors of black rats
found today throughout the Mediterranean and
northern Europe originated from those carried
out of the Indus Valley into Mesopotamia as
early as the 2nd millennium BC. It follows, on
t h e basis of t h e cytotaxonomic maps of
Niethammer (1975) and Yosida (1980), all of
these rats should be of the Asian karyotype
(with 2n=42). Yet genetic studies of modern
commensal R. rattus in these regions reveal that
the only karyotype represented is the Oceanian
type (with 2n=38), which would seem to indicate an ancestral origin in southern India, as
discussed in Armitage et al. (1984: 379).
In order to reconcile the apparent disparity
in the cytotaxonomic and zooarchaeological
evidence, two explanations may be considered:
1 The geographic ranges of the Asian and
Oceanian karyotypes as documented by
modern geneticists do not accurately reflect
the true distribution of these types in ancient times, when the range of the Oceanian
type may have extended much further
northwards into the Indus Valley; or

UNWELCOME COMPANIONS: ANCIENT RATS REVIEWED

2 Asian type rats did spread from northwest

India to southwest Asia and Asia Minor

during the 2nd millennium BC, but failed
to establish themselves permanently.
Some support for the second scenario comes
from the Greek Dark Age (Early Iron Age) site
at Nichoria in southwest Greece, where R.
rattus was noticeably absent from an otherwise
very rich small mammal faunal assemblage that
was excavated from apithos (storage jar) which
had served as a pit-fall trap for unwary small
creatures living on the acropolis c. 1050-975
BC (see Sloan & Duncan 1978: 75). Perhaps,
then, there was no continuity in the dispersal
of R. rattus from the 2nd millennium BC
through to the Roman period, and it was a
much later, second wave of rats from southern
India that established a permanent rat population in Egypt/Mediterranean, which in the
Roman period came to invade Europe.
More problematic is the claim by Tchernov
(1984) that commensal R. rattus has occupied
the coastal region of northern Israel since the
Natufian ( c . 9500-7500 BC). Certainly the
Natufian adoption of a sedentary way of life
centred on proto-villages with storage pits for
grain harvested from the wild, created conditions favouring infestation by rats. But where
did they come from? If commensal R. rattus
originated elsewhere (in sub-tropical southeast
Asia), it is difficult to explain them in the Levant at so early a period. Tchernov overcomes
this problem by suggesting that R. rattus is native to the southern Levant, where it has lived
since the end of the Pleistocene. Before accepting this, however, we should re-examine the
stratigraphic integrity of the Natufian rodent
bones, to be sure they are not contaminated
from more recent levels.
Extinction in the Dark Ages
While R. rattus is known to have been present
in Roman Britain, its fine-scale distribution
there is poorly understood. In Britain, and
throughout northern Europe, was R. rattus
mainly confined to the ports and larger urban
centres, less common in, or even entirely absent from, rural districts? Reumer (1986) thinks
so, as rat was absent from a large sample of
small mammals he examined from the Roman
levels in the town of Tiddington near Stratford,
yet he acknowledges the inland spread of this
species by the 5th century AD (there were rat

233

bones in the sub-Roman levels at Wroxeter:

Armitage et al. 1984).
Our reconstruction of rat distribution in later
Roman times will have to take account of the
economic upheavals of that period. As early
as the mid 2nd century AD, southern and central urban centres such as Londinium experienced decline, with greatly reduced densities
of human occupation (Sheldon 1975; Merrifield 1983: 147; Marsden & West 1992),this was
accompanied by a shift i n socio-economic
emphasis to the rural (villa) estates which functioned as self-reliant working farms and/or
luxurious country houses (Hills 1986: 130),all
of which probably affected rat populations of
the urban centres. Although the rat bones in
4th-century deposits at Crosswall in the City
of London (Armitage et al. 1984) indicates continuity of rat occupancy, actual rat numbers in
London and other port cities may nevertheless
have been declining, while the construction of
villas may have provided opportunities for rats
to settle in rural districts, a process that could
have been facilitated by a warmer climate (for
the later Roman climate in Britain, see Addyman
et al. 1976). Black rats, unwittingly transported
by the Romans to their villas, could have moved
into nearby native (British) settlement sites. The
same diffusion may have taken place in Gaul
where a similar shift of economic emphasis from
urban (city) to rural (villa) sites occurred.
By the terminology and conceptual models
of biological invasions of Hengeveld (1989: 1819), this would have been a hierarchical diffusion, featuring, first, long-distance jump
dispersal from the primary foci (major urban
centres/ports) to isolated, independently
propagating bridgeheads (villas); then, a further spread into the surrounding countryside
(native settlements) by neighbourhood diffusion, this shorter-distance secondary spread
depending on local topography, settlement
pattern and human density.
Only through the systematic collection and
detailed interpretation of zooarchaeological
evidence from rural Romano-British sites will
this model be substantiated or refuted. Of special interest will be just how far west and north
h a d the spread of R. rattus reached, a n d
whether it survived in these regions into the
sub-Roman (5th century AD) period, when the
Roman way of life was replaced by an impoverished version of Iron Age society - when

234

PHILIP L. ARMITAGE

the human population retreated from former

Roman centres to the hillforts their ancestors
had fortified centuries before (Hills 1986: 138).
For the warmth-loving black rat these elevated
hillfort locations were probably ill-suited as
habitats - cool, wet and exposed.
By the Dark Ages (6th-8th centuries AD)
the rats had gone, as first revealed by Wests
survey (in Armitage et al. 1984).The supposed
8th-century specimens from Coppergate, York,
included by West were later confirmed as of
the late 9th century, leaving a clear gap in Britain between the 6th and 8th centuries in which
no rats have been found. Some would argue
that this absence of rats is more apparent than
real, reflecting inadequate sampling strategies
for small mammal remains. OConnorsmeticulous work at York, however, provides irrefutable evidence for the absence of rat in that city
during the Anglian period, a conclusion
reached after extensive sieving and the recovery of the bones of many other small mammals
(see OConnor 1988a & 1991).Similar negative
evidence from elsewhere in northern and central Europe reveals rat extinction to have been
widespread throughout what had been the
Western Roman Provinces. Only in the Eastern Roman Empire (later the Byzantine Empire)
is there definite proof for a continuity of R.
rattus from the 6th-9th centuries AD: their
bones have been recorded from 6th-century
Corsica (Vigne & Marinval-Vigne 1985), in levels dated 6th-7th century AD at Naples, Italy
(A. King pers. comm. 1984),in Byzantine deposits at Kalapodi, Boeotia, Greece (Stanzel 1991:
121) and at Apamea, northern Syria, in levels
dated to 6th-7th century AD (Gautier 1984). In
the Byzantine Empire, the Roman economy and
lifestyle continued largely uninterrupted, while
northern Europe suffered barbarian incursions,
urban decay and - perhaps more importantly
for rats - the virtual severance of commercial
contact with the Mediterranean (Byzantine)
world (see Lewis 1958: 38 & 93).
This enforced isolation of the old Roman Atlantic Provinces, including Britain and western
Gaul, meant there would be no further replenishment of their rat populations, vulnerable from
their being at the extreme climatic limits to the
geographic range of this subtropical species. The
continued survival of R. rattus in northern latitudes had depended on close association with
humans, which the breakdown in heated life-

styles threatened. One contributory factor may

have been the replacement of Roman stone
buildings, many heated by hypocaust systems,
with wooden huts that were little better than
temporary shelters (Myers, of Anglo-Saxon
houses at Sutton Courtney, referenced by Loyn
1962: 42). Draughty and cold, these would
have provided poor harbourage for the warmthloving black rat. Nevertheless, the sunken
houses in York, from the time of Viking settlement, hear certain similarities in mode and
p l a n of c o n s t r u c t i o n w i t h Anglo-Saxon
Grubenhauser (Hills 1986: 194) and these were
infested with rats (see below). An additional
factor must therefore have brought about the
demise of the black rat in northern Europe
sometime during the 6th century AD. It could,
perhaps, have been a deterioration in climate:
proxy records from five upland blanket mire
sites in the British Isles show cooler temperatures and prolonged wetness c. 1400 BP (radiocarbon calibrated date range AD 415-790)
according to Blackford & Chambers (1991),and
climatic deterioration in the mid 6th century
is also shown by Irish tree-ring studies (Baillie
& Munro 1988).
Rats and the Viking trade revival
Armitage et al. (1984) concluded that the reappearance of R. rattus in Britain was coincid e n t w i t h t h e revival a n d e x p a n s i o n of
international trade in the Anglo-Scandinavian1
later Anglo-Saxon periods, when trading ports
were established along the eastern and southern coasts and on navigable rivers (Reynolds
1977).OConnor (1991: 319) further considered
this aspect, believing the presence of rats in Viking York - as evidenced by their remains at
Coppergate, in 9th century levels -had resulted
from occupation of the city by Scandinavian settlers . . . [when] the city was receiving a substantial input of people and cargoes, and the means
of introduction was certainly available.
If, as now seems proven, there was a new
invasion of black rats into Britain during the
late 9th century - rather than an expansion
(recovery phase) of relict pockets (surviving
isolated colonies) of the Roman rat population
- where did these animals come from? If R.
rattus became extinct throughout northern
Europe in the Dark Ages, the source(s) must
have been elsewhere, in the Byzantine Empire
or perhaps even further eastwards, in the Mus-

UNWELCOME COMPANIONS: ANCIENT RATS REVIEWED

lim world -and Viking traders had by the 9th

century established direct trade links to both
these civilizations.
Viking voyages made in the 9th century
along the western seaboard of Europe and into
the Mediterranean appear to have been raiding/exploratory rather than trading ventures;
they therefore probably provided little opportunity for transport of rats from the Mediterranean. We should look instead to the principal
commercial route to Byzantium, by way of
Kievan Russia. As discussed by Martin (1987:
1 2 8 ) Swedish merchant mariners penetrated
by way of the Baltic and through the heart of
Russia to Constantinople dragging their ships
overland between the navigable waterways offered by the great river systems. This route
extended along the river systems of the Divana
and Drueper, and thence to the Black Sea via
Konugard (Kiev). From the Black Sea port of
Berezany, merchants could sail direct to
Mikligard (Constantinople), the administrative
and commercial hub of the Byzantine Empire.
Another Viking trade route crossed the Baltic to connect with Holmgard (Novgorod) in
Russia, then followed the Volga river system
to the Caspian Sea, across which lay the port
of Gurgan and the overland caravan route to
Baghdad, then the largest city in the world and
the heart of Muslim civilization. This trade link
may hold great significance for the origins of
the second population of black rats, as Muslim merchants had themselves established a
vigorous commerce with the peoples of southeast Asia and the Far East (the presumed homeland of R. rattus!). Expansion of the Islamic
faith after AD 632 had by the 9th century
brought stability in central Asia and restored
contacts between the eastern and western
halves of the Euroasian heartland previously
disrupted by the barbarian incursions (Barraclough 1989: 109). Trading voyages were undertaken by Arab dhows (sturdy lateen-rigged
ocean-going ships) between Arabia, India and
China, in an extensive maritime activity which
would have given opportunities for further influx of R. rattus from southeast Asia into southwest Asia via the Persian Gulf. Having reached
and infested Baghdad, these rats could have
been transported through central Russia and
into the Baltic region, eventually to spread
along the maritime trade routes to the northern European countries including Britain. Arab

235

traders during this same period (8th-10th century) also probably were responsible for first
introducing black rats into eastern and southern Africa, as evidenced by R. rattus bones
found at Pont Drift, northern Transvaal, and
Ndondondwane, Natal (Plug & Dippenaar 1979:
8 2 ; Voigt & von den Driesch 1984: 100).
There is zooarchaeological evidence for the
passage of black rats along either or both of the
major Viking trade routes during the 9th century. The seaport of Birka in Sweden, during
this period, served as the key Baltic trading
settlement, the main destination of goods
brought to Scandinavia from Byzantium and
the Islamic east (Graham-Campbell & Kidd
1980: 45). Excavations in Birka yielded skeletal remains of R. rattus from levels dated 800900 AD (Lepiksaar referred to in de Bruyn 1981:
64). Once in Birka, rats had an opportunity of
crossing the sea westwards to York, and other
English east-coast ports. Given that these Viking trade routes also reached Ireland, there is
an inexplicable lack of evidence for R. rattus
there: no rat bones were found by McCormick
in the large samples of faunal material from
loth- to 11th-century levels in Viking Dublin,
or from the 11th-century urban site at Waterford (McCormick pers. comm. 1992). Only in
the Early Christian level at Ruthmullan, a
raised rath site on the coast in County Down
(Lynn 1982: 154), does R. rattus appear in Ireland prior to the Norman occupation of AD 1169
(McCormick 1991).
An equally inexplicable absence occurs at
the important early medieval emporium of
Dorestad (present day Duurstede in the Netherlands) and at the flourishing Anglo-Saxon
trading settlement of Hamwic (early medieval
Southampton) (Prummel 1983: 245-6). These
settlements pre-date the Viking trade with Byzantium and the Islamic east, yet reappraisal
of northern maritime history shows the possibility of an earlier reintroduction of this rodent
species. Haywood (1991) sees that the capabilities of the pre-Viking Germanic seafarers
[have] been underestimated. In fact, Frankish
naval forces were employed widely from the
late 7th-late 8th centuries: on inland waterways in support of military operations against
the Slavs, Saxons and Avars; on the open seas,
in the western Mediterranean campaigning
against Muslim pirates from Spain and Africa,
and as far east as the Adriatic fighting against

236

PHILIP L. ARMITAGE

Byzantium for control of Venice. All this naval activity in the Mediterranean must surely
have provided some opportunity for rats to be
transported into northern Europe in Frankish
vessels returning home. Before its destruction
by raiding Vikings in AD 863, Dorestad was the
principal centre of activity of Friesian commerce in western Europe; it continued as an
important trading settlement under Frankish
control throughout the late 8th/early 9th century (see Loyn 1962: 82-3). Had Frankish warships brought rats from the Mediterranean, they
should have been present in Dorestad, from
where they could have spread to York, Hamwic,
London and other English trading settlements.
Part of the answer may be found in the organization of the Frankish fleets, if those operating
in the Mediterranean sailed from ports along
the southern coast of the Frankish Kingdom,
isolated from those stationed in the North Sea.
Frankish seafaring activity in the Mediterranean was essentially naval rather than commercial; as Lewis (1958: 243) observed, the
world of the Carolingians faced north rather
than south. . . . Its economic centre also was
moving to the northeast towards Germany.
Regional disputes and fragmentation in
Carolingian France had by AD 900 resulted in
the economy of Poitou, the Seine and the interior of Picardy [becoming] essentially local
in nature , , . and almost no commerce existed
between [these regions] and the Mediterranean
(Lewis 1958: 294). The internal isolation of
much of France probably explains the late reintroduction of R. rattus which seems to have
been no earlier than the 11th century, some two
centuries after its reappearance in Britain: in
this connection, the 11th-century record of
black rat from the monastic site at La CharitBsur-Loire (the earliest for medieval France) is
of significance (Audoin-Rouzeau 1986: 44).
In marked contrast, 9th-century England
seems to have maintained contact with the Mediterranean, and by the loth century there was
considerable commerce between the two regions.
Italian merchants traded in England, whose own
merchants, in turn, visited Italy (see Lewis 1958:
299,301,305).Thismay explainthelate 10th-century record of R. m f f u s in London, an immature
tibia at St Magnus in the City (Annitage 1979).
Opportunities for rats to spread from the
Mediterranean to northern Europe were greatly
facilitated from the 11th century onward when

the Normans extended their sphere of influence into the Mediterranean, opening again the
old Roman commerce routes, including the
important RhGne-Rhine route. Throughout
western Europe, phenomenal human population growth in the High Medieval period (11th13th centuries) provided optimal conditions for
proliferation of rats. Larger populations, rising
rural prosperity and resurgent international
trade precipitated a remarkable phase in urban
expansion (Butler 1975; Platt 1976: 21).
All this would have favoured rat infestation,
and the archaeological record is beginning to
confirm that R. rattus did extend its geographic
range throughout northern Europe. Rat remains
at Abingdon, Ascot Doilly, Tetsworth, Exeter,
Reigate, Middleton Stoney, Stamford, South
Witham, Ludgershall, York, Kilton Castle and
Lincoln (West in Armitage et al. 1984) indicate that in Britain R. rattus was well established by the High Medieval period. Giraldus
Cambrensis reference i n Itinerarium Kamberiae of c. 1191 AD (Public Record Office 1868:
111)further shows that rats had spread as far
westwards as Wales, thereby re-establishing
their Roman distribution pattern.
Morphological changes and the Little Ice Age
Workers in the early 1980s noticed the extraordinarily large size apparent in later medieval/
early Tudor rat bones from British archaeological sites. It seemed that modern black rats were
smaller. This size difference may have arisen
out of the lack of interspecific competition: R.
rattus entering northern Europe in medieval
times found an unoccupied niche for, until the
introduction of R. norvegicus sometime in the
early 18th century, it enjoyed an exclusive opportunity to exploit the food resources and
harbourage of human settlements. Without rival rodent species or any real threat from humans (whose eradication measures were largely
ineffectual), R. rattus was, by this model, able
to attain full optimal body size.
Another factor worthy of consideration is
linked to Bergmanns ecogeographical rule
(Mayr 1963: 318-21). Was the spread of this
sub-tropical rodent into cooler and wetter
northern latitudes accompanied by adaptive
physiological and morphological changes?
Coat colour adaptations
Marked changes in the original wild-type

UNWELCOME COMPANIONS: ANCIENT RATS REVIEWED

237

FIGURE2. Black rut as depicted b y Swiss naturalist-physician Gesner (1551).

pelage are evident in Swiss naturalist Konrad

Gesners description of the local rats he saw,
which were: colore subniger, vel fuscus, qui
ventrem versus dilutior est (Gesner 1551) (FIGURE 2). This melanic phenotype then, as now,
was apparently predominant throughout much
of northernlwestern Europe; according to de
1Isle(1865),it arose from two mutational transformations of the original wild-type coat colour, partly as a result of climatic influences.
The white belly of the wild type changed to
grey when R. rattus entered Egypt and the
Mediterranean region; the second change (in
the colour of the back and flanks), from brown
to black, followed when its range later extended
even further, into central and northern Europe
(Tomich & Komi 1966 is a useful synopsis of
the genetic basis of these changes).
T h e coat colour mutations w i t h i n t h e
commensal form of R. rattus created much confusion among taxonomists, who in the late
19th/early 20th century accorded each of the
three main pelage types full subspecific status, as follows:
Rattusmttusmttus (Linnaeus1758),the trueblack
rat (also known as house rat, wharf rat & ship
rat). Black dorsum with slate-greybelly.
Rattus rattus alexandrinus (Geoffroy 1803).
Agouti (brown) dorsum with grey belly.
Rattus rattus frugivorous (Rafinesque 1814), the
fruit rat. Original wild-typepelage: agouti
dorsum with white belly.
Under this classification, each subspecieswas
believed to exhibit distinctive distributional1
behavioural traits: R . r. rattus a n d R . r.
alexandrinus as strictly indoor rats (obligate
commensals), while R. r. frugivorous was
peridomestic, rarely found indoors, but the

most common form on ocean-going ships

(Schwarz & Schwarz 1967).
Modern field observations question these
distinctions, whether in Cardiff between the
wars (Matheson 1931), or southwest Florida
today (survey by the present author) and the
three main colour forms are nowadays viewed
as polymorphic variants of R. rattus rather than
as true subspecies (Armitage 1993). What is
important, however, is the prevalence of the
black (melanic) form in northern Europe, with
Twigg (1984: 86) commenting, like all melanics
. . . [this form] is hardier in a cold climate.
Another climatic influence may have been the
high rainfall levels in northern Europe and the
prevailing year-round high humiditylwetness it is interesting to note that in Hawaii Tomich
(1968) found a high prevalence of the melanic
form in the higher and wetter parts of the island.
Size adaptations

Besides determining the pelage colour, the wet

temperate climate of northern Europe may have
also resulted in other physiological adaptations
in R. rattus. By Bergmanns rule, European
black rats would be more robust and larger in
body size than the gracile, smaller animals of
sub-tropical latitudes. Modern osteometric data
does not support this notion however: in body
size and cranial dimensions, R. rattus specimens collected i n sub-tropical southwest
Florida and examined by the author between
1988 and 1991 appear similar to their counterparts in northern Europe. One explanation for
this unexpected finding is that modern black
rats in Europe may be relatively recent arrivals, which do not therefore carry the traits characteristic of the medieval population. In Britain

PHILIP L. ARMITAGE

238

date

no.
specimens

femur length (mm)

mean
range

later medievallTudor [ I 4th/l6th century)

SD

reference

37.0

34.9-39.8

Armitage (1977: 223)

southwest Florida
(climate: subtropical)

33

34.3

30.4-36.8

1.65

Armitage (1993)

continental northern Europe

(climate: cool temperate)

32.4

31.4-33.5

de Bruyn (1981: 45)

City of London

modern

TABLE1. Size comparisons of black nits [adults only).

especially the modern population is apparently

in flux; apart from isolated (casual) instances
of immigration to ports, for all practical purposes R. rattus may be considered on the way
to extinction (see The Mammal Society Newsletter 71, Autumn 1987).
In respect of a break between the medieval
and the modern black rat populations of Britain, Matheson (1939: 93) notes:
The subspecies [sic]of the black rat formerly found
in London, as in other parts of Great Britain, was
the Old English black rat, R. r. rattus; the fact the
alexandrinus is now the most frequent there suggests that the black rat population of modern London originated in the first place from shipping, and
not from any revival within the city of the old type.

If many rats perished from the cold, the population was greatly depleted in Britain, and possibly throughout northern Europe (Twigg 1984;
Davis 1986) as is supported by archaeological
records for R. rattus in Britain (West in Armitage
et al. 1984: 381, figure 6) which show a peak in
the 13th century followed by a sharp and continuous decline from the 14th to 18th centuries.
On the continent, Audoin & Vigne (in press) suggest that rats were much more abundant than
non-commensal small mammals (voles, wood
mouse etc.) in European towns until the time of
the Black Death, after which there was a re-colonization of the towns by both non-commensals
and wild vegetation, particularly in the late 14th15th centuries.

If this is correct, then the modern (transient)

rat population in Britain, and possibly throughout the rest of northern Europe as well, has not
been around long enough to exhibit adaptation
responses to the environment/climate, whereas
the rats of later medieval/early Tudor Britain,
descendants of a black rat population introduced in the late 1 0 t h / l l t h century h a d
adapted over some four to five centuries.
Adaptive responses in later medieval rats may
have been especially pronounced owing to climatic deterioration at the beginning of the Little
Ice Age in northern Europe. Evidence that
Bergmanns rule operated in the later medieval
rat population is provided by comparing femur
length in 14th/l6th-centuryrats from the City of
London with those from modern rats in southwest Florida and northern Europe, which clearly
reveals the extraordinary size in the former group
(TABLE
1).The body size increase may not have
been sufficient, however, to ensure survival of
all animals under the severe climatic conditions.

Conclusions
The black rat is the quintessential example of a
mammalian commensal weed species that has
thriven due to its opportunistic lifestyle, and
spread globally by its close, unwelcome association with mankind. By combining historical and
new archaeological evidence it is becoming possible to chart in fine as well as in broad scale this
geographic range extension. Such studies reveal
that the story of the black rat mirrors closely the
ebb and flow of human endeavours. Its dispersion from the original homeland in southeast Asia
was dynamic, with long-distance range extension, then contraction regionally, often leading
to localized extinction, followed later by re-invasion and re-colonization. In Britain the emerging picture is of rolling introductions and
constant population changes, long-term viability very much dependent on regular topping up
by immigrants brought in by shipping. Viewed
over the centuries, the survival pattern of the
black rat population in Britain has been fine-

UNWELCOME COMPANIONS: ANCIENT RATS REVIEWED

239

FIGURE3. Nineteenth-century engraving (British) showing an apparently abundant Rattus rattus - a

somewhat misleading representation as b y this period the black rat in Briain had in m a n y localities
been extirpated b y its brown cousin Rattus norvegicus and was headed for extinction.

tuned by climatic changes and by fluctuations

in the socio-economic fortunes of the human inhabitants - and, more recently (from the late
18th/early 19th century onwards), adversely affected by the arrival of its competitive brown
cousin Rattus norvegicus (FIGURE
3).
Acknowledgements. I wish to express my special gratitude
to Barbara West for her perceptive comments, kind assistance a n d encouragement. I a m also indebted to Terry

OConnor (University of Bradford) for his helpful comments during the preparation of this paper. Sincere thanks
also go to the following colleagues for their generous contributions to this project: Robert Kruszynski (British Museum: Natural History), Finbar McCormick (Queens
University Belfast), Peter Brimblecombe (University of East
Anglia), Jean-Denis Vigne (Museum National dHistoire
Naturelle, Paris) and Frederique Audoin-Rouzeau (Paris),
Achilles Gautier (University of Gent) and Anton Ervynck
(Institute for the Archaeological Heritage of the Flemish
Community, Belgium).

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