We heard a wonderful paper by Joschka Meier talking to us about ‘Exploding Pigs & Retirement Homes For Cows: Alpine Human-Animal Relations in the Late Middle Ages’. The combined cow kindergarten/retirement home was a particularly nice note to learn about the past.
Joschka’s work today will be published in his forthcoming thesis (submitting next year!) so keep an eye out for that. Until then, Joschka has a hcommons (click here) that is regularly updated and includes articles as well as slides of past presentations.
He also has a published article about alpine infrastructure and environmental adaptation (which also touches on pastures and animals), that can be found here: click. This article was published in a book that also had multiple chapters dedicated to topics like mining, forestry and canals/waterways – the index (included in the PDF) is well worth a look for anyone interested in these topics!
He also has an article that should come out early next year, which is mainly about women’s history, but also includes things about Alpwirtschaft and pastoral work – keep an eye out for that too!
