Stable Isotope Perspectives on Diet and Dietary Change within the California Mission System: An Example from the Sanchez Adobe (CA-SMA-71)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Life and Death in the San Francisco Bay: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Historic Lifeways", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In collaboration with Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of Mission San Juan Bautista, we analyzed bone and tooth collagen from 15 human burials and faunal remains exposed during recent construction work at the Sanchez Adobe, CA-SMA-71, dating between 1780 and 1800. Tracing diet across skeletal tissues that formed at different times in a person’s life, we examine diet from before a person entered the mission, to after, providing an individual-level estimate of how foodways changed across this momentous social and economic transition. Results show 1) a reduction in the importance of, but continuing reliance on, marine foods in the mission, 2) males have greater dietary change than females, 3) children and adolescents who were likely born within the mission show the greatest divergence from pre-contact dietary patterns, suggesting a willingness of younger individuals to adopt Euroamerican foods, and 4) some animals (chickens, cows) ate maize, but humans ate very little.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Life and Death in the San Francisco Bay: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Historic Lifeways

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow