Turkey Provisioning, Exchange, and the Isotopic Zooarchaeology of Social Transformations in the Mesa Verde Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Changes in resource acquisition patterns are important components of larger social transformations, including shifts in the source areas and transport patterns of important animal resources. In the Mesa Verde region, increasing population aggregation and shifting settlement locations from AD 750 through 1225 also increased pressure on local wild and cultivated food resources, including animals. As the availability of some taxa diminished around settlements, farmers increased their use of previously rarely consumed species like domesticated turkeys, and likely relied on increasingly distant source areas for important species such as deer. Archaeological chemistry—specifically strontium, carbon, and oxygen isotope analysis—allows us to critically examine the extent to which transport of fauna took place and whether animal source areas changed over time, and assess existing arguments about localized food resource depletion and its role in social changes that culminated in widespread village depopulation by AD 1280. In this presentation, we focus on the regional exchange and maize provisioning of domesticated turkeys, including assessment of whether changes in these practices were associated with periods of resource stress and social change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Isotopic and Animal aDNA Analyses in the Southwest/Northwest   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35649.0