How Many Turkeys Did It Take to Make a Blanket?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For a thousand years, turkey feather blankets were a standard part of Ancestral Pueblo material culture in the Central Mesa Verde (CMV) area. Investigating the "supply side" of blanket-making includes comparing the number of feathers needed for a blanket with the number of suitable feathers obtainable from an adult turkey. We estimate a one meter square blanket curated at the Edge of the Cedars Museum in Blanding required 12,000 to 14,000 body feathers measuring 5 to 17 cm long. Examination of several wild turkey pelts indicates an adult male has up to 2000 such feathers. If each household made only one new blanket annually, feathers from six or seven turkeys would be required each time. However, the archaeofaunal record doesn’t reflect this level of harvesting live birds. We discuss use-lives of the blankets; whether turkeys’ regular molts could have been a practical feather source; and if mature feathers could have been selectively picked from live birds. Also discussed are supply side effects when turkeys became a major meat source in the CMV after about CE 1150.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23038