Ritual or dietary use? Wild and domestic turkeys at Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581)

Summary

Recent work on turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) in the prehispanic Southwest (e.g., Speller et al. 2010, McCaffery et al. 2014) has highlighted both the long history of domestic turkey use in the Southwest and the concurrent exploitation of the local wild Merriam’s turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo merriami). This new information has added to the ongoing debate over whether turkeys were domesticated for ritual or for dietary purposes. At Tijeras Pueblo (LA 581), turkeys eating a maize-heavy diet (presumably domesticates) and turkeys with an isotopic signature more similar to modern wild specimens (presumably Merriam’s turkeys) have been identified in 14th century contexts. In this poster, we examine the contexts in which these turkeys were found to test the hypothesis that wild and domestic turkeys were treated differently by prehistoric Puebloans.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage