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Rachel Rolph
PhD Student (Archaeology),
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Biography
I was awarded my BA in archaeology by the 糖心原创 in 2021 and, after receiving masters funding from M4C (AHRC), completed my MRes in archaeology here in 2022. My PhD research (2022-2026) - Zootherapy: Investigating the Interconnection of Magic-Medicine-Religion in Roman Archaeology - is also funded by M4C and is supervised by Professor Will Bowden and Dr Holly Miller. I focus on the use of animals in medicine and the archaeological evidence for this in Roman-period Britain.
Research Summary
My doctoral research investigates zootherapy - the practice of using animals and their products to treat or prevent human illnesses. Although geographically and temporally widespread, zootherapy has… read more
Current Research
My doctoral research investigates zootherapy - the practice of using animals and their products to treat or prevent human illnesses. Although geographically and temporally widespread, zootherapy has been overlooked in archaeological scholarship. My work explores why zootherapy has been understudied in the past and how it might be identified, specifically within the archaeological record for Roman Britain. I use a three-point framework to approach zootherapy. This involves using a broad definition of medicine that places magico-religious practices within the sphere of healthcare; examining a range of evidence, including faunal remains, zoomorphic objects, and ancient textual sources; and defining the research context. The ancient texts contribute to a dataset of remedies (Zootherapy from Ancient Texts table) that demonstrates the great extent of Roman zootherapy and provides a means of narrowing my scope to three case studies. Through these case studies of dog, frog/toad, and oyster-based healthcare, I demonstrate that it is possible to argue for the zootherapeutic use of animals using archaeological evidence from Roman-period Britain. Consequently, I recommend a method by which Roman zootherapy can be investigated and propose archaeological indicators of zootherapeutic activity.