Flying Colors: Local and Non-local Birds in Chaco Canyon Archaeological Sites

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bird species found in archaeological contexts throughout Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, include a range of local and non-local birds, as well as game and non-game birds. We analyzed the set of 5,350 identified bird bones and compared species composition to the local and regional avifaunas that we expect to have occurred ~1000 years ago in Chaco Canyon and nearby riparian and montane habitats. Species composition differed strikingly from the surrounding avifauna. For example, some abundant local birds are not present in archaeological contexts, and some rare non-local birds are present. These differences persisted after controlling for body size and local abundance, and excluding raptors, fowl, and exotic imported species. We examined the possible importance of feather color and pattern in explaining the non-randomly selected set of birds in the recovered sample. Comparison with ethnographic accounts suggests long-term continuity in species selection, likely related to feather use.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Coloring the World: People and Colors in Southwestern Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23520