Far from the hulking beasts shown in modern depictions, the horses used in Medieval battles were more like ponies.
“Neither size, nor limb bone robusticity alone, are enough to confidently identify warhorses in the archaeological record,” said co-author Helene Benkert, a zooarchaeologist at the University of Exeter, in the. “Historic records don’t give the specific criteria which defined a warhorse; it is much more likely that throughout the medieval period, at different times, different conformations of horses were desirable in response to changing battlefield tactics and cultural preferences.
Horses are measured by how many hands high they are at their withers—where the neck meets the shoulders. The 13th century is when horses 16 hands high first begin to appear in the archaeological record. But it wasn’t for another century or so that horses became draftIn media, the researchers note, shire horses often play the role of warhorses. But shires stand at 18 hands high at their withers , making them much larger than actual warhorses were.