The conference, organized by the ICHTYA program, entitled Aquatic Animals in Captivity (from Antiquity to the 16th Century) will be held at the University of Caen ( MRSH , campus 1) on Thursday, June 4 and Friday, June 5, 2026 .
Deadline for submission of proposals: September 25, 2025.
Proposals, ranging from 300 to 500 words maximum, should be written in French or English, and be accompanied by a mini CV of 150 words maximum, including your contact details and, if possible, a web link to a personal or institutional page presenting your work and your bibliography. Send to brigitte.gauvin@unicaen.fr and thierry.buquet@unicaen.fr
General information
The purpose of the conference is to study the means, methods, and locations of aquatic animal captivity, and the interactions between captive species and humans. While the focus will obviously be on fishpond management, the conference’s main focus is not on human nutrition. The aim here is to consider the captivity of aquatic animals more broadly, with a particular focus on their living conditions.
Historiography has focused on aquaculture and fishponds primarily in relation to food and fishing, particularly in the Middle Ages. The history of menageries – still relatively little studied and still poorly known for the medieval period – has mainly focused on the study of the captivity of large exotic quadrupeds. It has been much less interested in avian fauna, apart from birds of prey used in falconry. A major collective work recently published has been devoted to the anthropological history of aviaries (Encager le ciel, 2025). The captivity of aquatic animals has, for its part, hardly been studied in the context of ceremonial animal gardens and parks for the pre-modern period; Likewise, the conditions of fish farming have been of little interest to fishpond historians – as if one considered that aquatic animals, and especially fish, were not really part of the “menagerie” or more broadly of all the animals kept in the entourage of a prince, or within the castle grounds – nor their possible role in this framework, beyond their status as a food reserve.
Periods and cultural areas
Greco-Latin Antiquity; Latin Middle Ages (including Northern Europe); Byzantium; Medieval and Ottoman Islam; Renaissance; 16th C.
Disciplines
History, philology and literature, historical anthropology, anthropozoology, archaeology, history of science (natural history), history of art and iconography, animal studies .
Themes
Contributions must fit into at least one of the following themes:
Glossary of spaces of captivity: we can examine the evolution of names from Antiquity to the Renaissance: piscinae , vivaria (fishponds), stagna (ponds), basins, etc., in textual documentation (inventories, accounts, practical treatises, literary texts, encyclopedias, natural history).
Criteria for choosing species: are they of local or exotic origin; are marine species kept? What are the other selection criteria: appearance (size, color), symbolic value (valued species such as eels, carp or sturgeons)? The symposium does not only consider fish, but all animals formerly considered as such (including marine mammals and cephalopods), or which are likely to live in a developed aquatic space, for example: hippopotamus, seal, sea lion, porpoise, walrus, polar bear, turtle, crocodile and various reptiles. In this regard, Bartholomew the Englishman ( De proprietatibus rerum 14.54) points out that in certain foveae (pits, moats or ponds) fish and reptiles of various species are fed.
Captivity Conditions: What do we know about the architecture and layout of fishponds, artificial ponds, pools, “swimming pools,” and “aquariums”? Do we have information on care, feeding, maintenance techniques, costs, and dedicated staff? How do they adapt to captivity? What are the methods and costs of transport from their natural environment or from one place of captivity to another? In this regard, we will not only focus on fish, but also on the conditions of captivity of species living both on land and in water. We will also be interested in the control and organization of reproduction.
Multiple functions: Can we distinguish between food uses (living reserves, prestige food) and pleasure uses (ornament, symbolism, curiosity, games and shows) in textual and iconographic sources or in archaeological remains?
What place for places of captivity : What is their relationship with the space of the garden, the aviaries, the menagerie, the private, abbey or castral space? How are the pools and aviaries articulated and more generally the coexistence between birds and fish (thinking in particular of the development of ponds for swans, ducks, etc.)? We will try to clearly differentiate between autonomous breeding ponds (mainly intended for food) and those belonging to the castral or monastic space (including ditches and moats).
Human-animal relationships: What are the relationships between fishpond employees or owners and aquatic animals: could there be “affective” bonds with certain species? We will also question possible exchanges and interactions, particularly with breeders or keepers at feeding time. Some authors, for example Pliny the Elder, Augustine, Vincent of Beauvais, or Rondelet, mentioned the sensitivity of fish to human presence and their reaction to the keepers’ loud calls. Have the sources preserved information on the pleasure derived from observing captive aquatic species? Do we have testimonies of possible taming and training of certain species, such as that of tamed moray eels in Pliny’s work?
Zoological knowledge: What role, if any, has the observation of captive aquatic species played in the development of zoological knowledge about aquatic fauna?
Social and political dimension: What is the role of fishponds and ponds in asserting social status and staging power – as, for example, in the extreme case of Pollio, who threw the slaves he wanted to punish to his moray eels?
Indicative bibliography
Aston Michael (éd.), Medieval Fish, Fisheries and Fishponds in England, Oxford, British Archaeological Reports, 1988 (BAR British Series 182).
Bardati Flaminia, Bondaz Julien and Roustan Mélanie (eds.), Encaging the sky: history, anthropology and aesthetics of aviaries , Paris, Scientific publications of the National Museum of Natural History, coll. “Natures in societies”, no. 9, 2024.
Bonow Madeleine, Olsén Håkan and Svanberg Ingvar (eds.), Historical aquaculture in Northern Europe , Huddinge, The Library, Södertörn University, 2016.
Hauck Karl, « Tiergarten im Pfalzbereich », in German Royal Palaces, Contributions to their Historical and Archaeological Research , Göttingen, Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1963, vol. 2/1, pp. 30‑74.
Higginbotham James, Piscinae. Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy. Chapel Hill – Londres, University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Loisel Gustave, History of menageries from Antiquity to the present day , Paris, O. Doin et fils, 1912, vol. 1.
Nash Colin E., The History of Aquaculture, Ames (Iowa), Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
Pieragnoli Joan, The Court of France and its Animals ( 16th – 17th Centuries ) , Paris, PUF, 2016.
Organisation
Conference organized by the ICHTYA program of the Michel de Boüard Center ( CRAHAM , UMR 6273). ICHTYA is dedicated to the history of the transmission of ichthyological knowledge, from Antiquity to the Renaissance.
Presentation of ICHTYA: https://craham.unicaen.fr/programmes/ichtya-corpus-de-traites-latins-dichthyologie-et-histoire-des-savoirs-sur-la-faune-aquatique/
ICHTYA Library: https://ichtya.unicaen.fr/lab/bibliotheque/accueil.html
Organizers :
- Brigitte Gauvin (University of Caen, Craham )
- Thierry Buquet ( CNRS , Craham )


