The Environmental and Cultural Context of North American Turkey Domestication

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is the only native vertebrate animal domesticated in North America. As such, the history, timing and process of its domestication is critical to our understanding of past human-animal relationships in the ancient Americas. This paper summarizes recent advancements in reconstructing the history of turkey husbandry in North America. We present original morphometric, isotopic and genetic analyses from turkeys in Mesoamerica and the American Southeast as a means of testing various hypotheses regarding the timing, geographic extent, and diversity of turkey rearing. Drawing upon the work of other scholars studying turkey domestication in the American Southwest, we then consider how region-specific environmental, cultural, and historic factors influenced the emergence, adoption and spread of turkey rearing throughout North America. Based on this comparative assessment, we also provide suggestions for future research on North American turkey domestication.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Questioning the Fundamentals of Plant and Animal Domestication   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23733