The Biological Baseline in Zooarchaeology: Unpacking the Domestication of South American Camelids

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The domestication of llamas and alpacas in South America resulted in compelling similarities to sheep and goat pastoralism in Western Asia, but the underlying biology of the wild ancestors of camelids provided distinct challenges to human control and selection. The pastoral economies of South America are strongly affected by these factors even today; these factors also weaken attempts to use sheep or goats as a model for llama and alpaca domestication. The South American camelids have distinctive digestive systems; specialized adaptations to deal with aridity, hypoxia, and cold; and as induced ovulators camelids provide unique challenges to humans attempts to control reproduction. The archaeology of the ancestral guanaco and vicuna is compared with the assemblages that suggest early llamas and alpacas, tracing the morphological, demographic, and genetic evidence for a camelid-specific process of domestication. This paper gratefully acknowledges Richard Redding’s fine-grained treatment of sheep and goat pastoralism that inspired a generation of scholarship.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Breaking the Mold: A Consideration of the Impacts and Legacies of Richard W. Redding   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39505.0