Pioneering Poultry: A Morphometric Investigation of Domestic Chickens (Gallus gallus) in Preindustrial North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Chicken bones are common in many historic faunal assemblages. Historic accounts indicate that domestic chickens introduced to North America by European colonists did well and multiplied quickly, but provide little information on the origins, characteristics, or roles poultry played in the North American colonies. A morphometric dataset generated from a sample of skeletons attributed to known heritage breeds provide an opportunity to evaluate the skeletal similarity between archaeological samples and breeds associated with egg and/or meat production. Using morphometric data collected on chicken bones from 18th and 19th century contexts in North America this analysis investigates the role of chickens in preindustrial North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Frontiers in Animal Management: Unconventional Species, New Methods, and Understudied Regions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23921