Colonial Subsistence Strategies: Resource Use in English Charleston and Spanish St. Augustine

Summary

Decades of zooarchaeological research shows that, in the 18th to early 19th centuries, Spanish colonists in St. Augustine and British colonists in Charleston practiced somewhat different provisioning strategies, despite similar environmental conditions. English colonists emphasized cattle and wild game, while Spanish settlers focused on fishes and other marine species. But new analysis from Spanish, French, and English sites in the Southeastern Atlantic coastal plain suggest that this was not the case in the first decades of colonial settlement. Early North American colonists practiced similar strategies in animal use, regardless of national affiliation, and this strategy varied significantly from the host country. These results were unexpected. New research on 17th to early 18th century sites in South Carolina supports this pattern of initial settlement. Dependence on cattle was the signature of early English sites, and the lowcountry diet becomes more diverse through time. In this paper, we consider reasons for this unexpected initial strategy and for the subsequent evolution in provisioning strategy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Good Questions Met by Archaeological Revelations   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-35,10