Andean Hunting and Pastoralism: Measures of Animal Health, Care, and Environmental Change

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Complex Human-Animal Interactions in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The origins of domesticated llamas and alpacas from their wild ancestors took place in arid and rugged environments. Zooarchaeological remains of camelids record the wellbeing, mobility, and longevity of individual animals. Records from several high-resolution assemblages from the central Andes show different life histories over time, and suggest forces acting on those life histories. Important measures from camelid teeth show how different combinations of forage, water availability, and soil produce different tooth wear rates (mesowear), conditions which probably impacted longevity and productivity of meat and fleece. This paper explores the direction and scale of changes that have been observed in animal life histories using tooth wear. Other aspects of animal health can be traced tooth eruption data, from bony pathologies on the jaw and on other skeletal elements. Both human influence on animals and dynamic vegetation, rainfall, and pathogens loads impacted camelid well-being. Genetic and isotopic analysis of remains may suggest some of the outcomes but direct measures of life history offer behavioral and environmental aspects of change. Life history data involves different sampling biases and deserves coordinated integration with the new wave of molecular approaches.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Complex Human-Animal Interactions in the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52316