Alan Outram Inaugural Lecture: 'The Origins of Equestrianism and Dairying: Understanding the Legacy of Eurasia’s Early Pastoralists.'

Much of Professor Outram’s recent research has been concerned with identifying the processes of horse domestication and the origins of pastoral societies in the Steppes of Central Asia. He has also been involved in a large project called ‘NeoMilk’, which aims to understand the introduction of dairying to the farming economies of the European Neolithic. The domestication of horses was a major turning point in human history that revolutionised transport, trade and warfare, whilst human adaptation to the use of milk products represented a hugely significant economic intensification in animal husbandry. Whilst these innovations first occurred in different places at different times, they were first conjoined in the Steppe societies of the Eneolithic and early Bronze Age, and, as indicated by new genetic evidence, this had highly significant implications for the prehistoric populations of Eurasia. This lecture shows how fieldwork, zooarchaeology, chemical residue analysis and ancient genetics are being used to shed light upon this fascinating sequence of events.