Fertility rites are ritual actions of many different kinds that aim to improve the fertility of plants, animals, or people. They are attested in many periods and a great many different regions, and their universal distribution is explained by the immense importance to human existence of fertility in plants and other living things. They played a key role in the preindustrial agrarian societies of the early modern period, particularly when climate change at the onset of the so-called Little Ice Age brought more frequent failed harvests and famines that threatened human and animal …