About the project
RATTUS is a five-year project aiming to understand the links between European rat populations and human societies over the past c.2500 years
The black rat and brown rat (Rattus rattus and Rattus norvegicus) are among the most globally successful commensal species: each has spread far beyond native ranges in southern and eastern Asia by colonising niches around human settlements. They probably reached Europe in the Iron Age and the 18th century respectively.
Rats' association with shifting patterns of settlements and trade makes them potentially valuable proxies for human economic history—if we can understood the extent of their dependency on humans. At the same time, rats have profound impacts on human societies as food pests and agents of disease, most notoriously—if controversially—implicated in historic plague pandemics including the 14th-century Black Death.
RATTUS aims to chart the history of rats in Europe from late prehistoric origins to the 19th century. Based in the BioArCh unit at the University of York, the project brings together archaeological, biological, and historical methods to address three key questions:
How has human history shaped the distribution and ecology of rats in Europe?
What can rats tell us about major historical processes?
How have rats impacted past European societies via disease, particularly plague pandemics?
The project is funded by the UKRI Frontier Research Guarantee scheme (formerly by the European Research Council), and involves partners at Trent University and the Departments of History and Biology at York, as well as an extensive network of collaborators across Europe and beyond.