Your Horse Is a Donkey! Identifying Domesticated Equids Using ZooMS

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Horses (Equus caballus) and donkeys (Equus asinus) play essential roles in human culture and economy. Unlike most other domesticates, horses and donkeys can produce hybrids. Mules, offspring of female horses and male donkeys, have been found in archaeological contexts across the Old World. Written sources describe the choice of horse, donkey, or mule as being often task-dependent. Romans preferred horses for riding, donkeys for endurance, such as pulling loads and ploughing, and mules for transporting civilian and military goods. After the end of the Roman period, equids became influential in Europe, especially for agricultural uses. Written records again suggest donkeys and mules were often preferred over horses. Despite the plethora of literary evidence, skeletal remains attributed to species remain scarce because current morphological studies are limited to reliably identifying only cranial and dental elements to species. While ancient DNA is the identification standard for equids, it is often cost-prohibitive and highly dependent on preservation conditions. Zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) can provide a cost-effective alternative for taxonomic identification. However, ZooMS markers could not distinguish between the equid species. Here we present a multi-enzyme ZooMS approach to distinguish between horses and donkeys and characterize the profiles of their hybrid, mules.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37413.0