Jamestown And Early Domestic Horse Use In Eastern North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The introduction of domestic horses into North America had tremendous social and ecological consequences – these animals underpinned the colonial projects of European powers, while also giving rise to powerful Indigenous horse cultures. Though much attention has been paid to the spread of horses mediated by Spanish settlement, other introductions via the eastern seaboard also had a lasting impact on the human-horse relationship across early America. At Jamestown, historic records indicate that the first British horses served a multitude of roles in colonial life, including an emergency food source. By applying new osteological and biomolecular techniques this project seeks to further explore the role of the first domestic horses at Jamestown (including ancestry, management, and use) and investigate their relationship to other early colonial and Indigenous-managed horse populations in historic North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Opening the Vault: What Collections Can Say About Jamestown’s Global Trade Network

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow