Navigating the Frontier of Colonial Diets: Domesticates and Wild Resource Use in the North America Fur Trade

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

European settlers in the Americas brought with them a familiar suite of domesticated plants and animals and frequently relied upon them for subsistence. Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, European colonial powers became involved in the fur trade, resulting in the development of numerous posts placed at varying distances from developed agricultural centers. Euroamerican colonists had access to traditional Eurasian agricultural products; however, fort and trade post residents also incorporated local and wild resources into their diets. In this paper, we examine the role of Eurasian domesticates (e.g., pigs, cattle) in fur trade community subsistence. Specifically, what effect do regionality and geographic location have on the presence of domesticates at fort locations? Additionally, does the nationality of fort occupants affect dietary patterning? We assess zooarchaeological assemblages from 25 fur trade-era forts across four physiographic regions: Coastal Pacific, Great Lakes and East, Hudson Plain, and Inland North America. We use statistical analyses, including indexes, ANOVA, and clustering to assess the extent to which geography and nationality impact the assemblage. These data help shed light on how colonial interactions were shaped by the reliance on domesticate and wild resources during the fur trade in North America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Columbian Exchange Revisited: Archaeological and Anthropological Perspectives on Eurasian Domesticates in the Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37974.0