Riding, Ruling, and Resistance

Abstract

Horses have had a singular impact on human societies. Beyond increasing interconnectivity and revolutionizing warfare, reconfigurations of human-horse relationships coincide with changes in sociopolitical formations. How this occurs is less well understood. This article proposes that relationships of equestrianism transform people and horses reciprocally, generating new possibilities for both species. Focusing here on human benefits, equestrianism affords differential and increased mobility, access, and experience for people, which translate horse power into human power. This has particular consequences for how political authority is negotiated. I use the tell societies of Bronze Age Hungary (ca. 2300/2200–1600/1500 BC) to model how horses were harnessed in resistance to centralized rule and social inequality as much as they were used to assert power. This interpretation challenges traditional grand narratives for the European Bronze Age, which see male elite warriors driving chariots, desirous of bronze, and instituting hierarchical, complex societies. Rather, ordinary women and men riding horses built these long-lived communities and were variously able to resist chiefly authority because of the power offered by horses. The theory starts disentangling mechanisms between local equestrianism and long-term historical changes.