Biomolecular and zooarchaeological insights into human-turtle interactions in historical New Orleans, Louisiana

Author(s): Ryan Kennedy

Year: 2025

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Biomolecular Approaches to Human-Animal Interactions Past and Present" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

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Turtle soup is a dish synonymous with New Orleans’ cuisine, and its deep history is enshrined in historical cookbooks, newspapers, and restaurant menus. However, despite its cultural and historical importance in New Orleans and other areas of the United States, turtle soup, and the turtles from which it is made, remain largely unstudied by archaeologists. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of turtle remains from over ten 18<sup>th</sup>- and 19<sup>th</sup>-century archaeological sites in New Orleans, with an eye towards identifying trends in historical taste preferences, turtle harvesting strategies, and human impacts to historical turtle populations. To this end, we present taxonomic identifications from zooarchaeology and zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS), carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur stable isotope compositions, and turtle size estimations produced via linear regression models to trace long-term continuity and change in turtle use and turtle historical ecology over 200 years of New Orleans’ history. Ultimately, we aim to demonstrate how biomolecular approaches are critical to teasing out past human-turtle relationships, including by revealing long-term trends in turtle ecology that are not detectable with zooarchaeological data alone.

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Cite this Record

Biomolecular and zooarchaeological insights into human-turtle interactions in historical New Orleans, Louisiana. Ryan Kennedy. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509632)

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Keywords

General
ancient DNA • Worldwide • Zooarchaeology

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50782