Between farming and hunting: animal explotation in the Zacapu Basin, Michoacán, Mexico (100-1450 AD)

Summary

If the questions of herding or management of wild species have been regularly addressed in Mesoamerican zooarchaeology, cultural development is assumed to be essentially directed by agriculture. Indeed, the presence of only two widely recognised domesticated animals, the dog (Canis familiaris) and the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), would have limited the growth of a more complex agro-pastoralism. However, the importance of non-domesticated animals and their interactions with the agricultural sphere may be underestimated. As demonstrated by ethnographic data, traditional Mesoamerican populations would obtain not only crops from cultivated fields, but small animals as well through a practice of so called garden-hunting. Based on the zooarchaeological study of three sites from the Zacapu Basin (Michoacán, Mexico), ranging from 500 to 1450 AD, this presentation will explore the relationships between animal exploitation and cultural construction. We will show how exploitation practices evolve, following an increasing demographic pressure in the region, from an opportunistic hunting behaviour to the development of garden-hunting and what seems to be the late adoption of the turkey as a new domesticated animal.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Where the Wild Things Are Not: Human-Animal Interaction in the Space between Wild and Domestic   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14997