Ancestral Pueblo Turkey Management on the Pajarito Plateau (C.E. 1150-1600)

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.

In this paper we use bone apatite and collagen stable isotope analysis to examine long-term Ancestral Pueblo turkey management strategies on the Pajarito Plateau in the northern Rio Grande of New Mexico. Since previous preliminary research within this region identified the presence of domesticated turkeys (aHap1) consuming C4-based diets (presumably maize) during the Coalition period (C.E. 1150-1300) at the multi-room pueblo site of LA 4618 (Rawlings and Driver 2010; Speller et al. 2010), our analysis takes a diachronic approach by investigating three main questions: 1) Do Coalition Period turkey diets from additional sites on the Pajarito Plateau match the pattern found at LA 4618?, 2) Do turkey diets change overtime between the Coalition to Classic Period (C.E. 1150-1600)?, and 3) Do turkey diets shift in tandem with known periods of variability in precipitation within the prehispanic northern Rio Grande? Our results suggest that turkey diets shift over time, possibly due to variability in rainfall and thus the ability to feed turkeys maize, but equifinality and the history of zooarchaeological research within this region continue to influence these results and interpretations.

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): 24210