The pig was everywhere in medieval Europe. It was commonplace — one wouldn’t have to look far to see a pig. But what was the pig’s place? What role did they really have in medieval society?

Human lives are and have been deeply entangled with animal lives. This closeness to animals is both physical and mental — as humans have interacted with animals, they have thought with and through them. This talk is based on my book The Medieval Pig in which I examine the relationship between pigs and people in the various European places in which pigs appear in the medieval sources: in the countryside, in the city, on the plate, and in the mind. In all of these places, pigs shaped human life, and humans shaped the pig’s. With the help of a variety of sources in which pigs appear, I argue that the ubiquitous medieval pig mattered for how medieval life functioned.