Bone isotopes, eggshell and turkey husbandry at Arroyo Hondo Pueblo

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.06.016 Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Bone isotopes of the Arroyo Hondo turkeys suggest a C4-based diet.

  • Turkey husbandry was stable despite climatic and demographic variability.

  • Quantitative analyses suggest turkeys played a minor role in subsistence.

Abstract

Studies of archaeofaunal turkey and eggshell remains have identified a clear and consistent pattern of turkey husbandry across the prehistoric Southwest. Domestic turkeys appear to have been penned, fed maize, and kept genetically isolated from wild turkey populations. In this study we use carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotope values, scanning electron microscopy of eggshells, and quantitative analysis of turkey remains from Arroyo Hondo Pueblo (LA 12) to explore how turkey husbandry at this Pueblo IV site fits into the overall regional pattern. We find that although turkeys seem to have played a minor role in the overall faunal subsistence at Arroyo Hondo, they were nevertheless carefully husbanded, even during periods of climatic stress and human demographic fluctuation.

Section snippets

1. Introduction

Bone and eggshell from turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) are frequently identified in prehistoric archaeological contexts from the American Southwest (e.g., Akins, 1985, Badenhorst and Driver, 2009, Beacham and Durand, 2007). These data, combined with a rich ethnographic and ethnohistoric record, indicate that turkey eggs, feathers and meat held significant economic and ceremonial value to indigenous groups in this region (Beidleman, 1956, Durand, 2003, Lange, 1950, Reed, 1951, Schroeder, 1968).

2. Turkeys and eggs at Arroyo Hondo Pueblo

Arroyo Hondo Pueblo was founded in ~ 1300 C.E. and occupied intermittently until its abandonment around 1425 C.E. (Creamer, 1993). The site was excavated between 1971 and 1974 by the School of American Research (see Shapiro, 2005). Site excavators identified two general periods of occupation (Creamer, 1993), with Component I spanning approximately 1300–1370 C.E. and Component II 1370–1425 C.E. (Fig. 2).

The faunal assemblage recovered at Arroyo Hondo comprised 91 taxa and a NISP (number of identified

3. Methods

We examined turkey eggshell and bone from both Component I and II contexts (Fig. 2) at Arroyo Hondo. All scanning electron micrographs and source code for analyses conducted in R (3.1.1) and RStudio (0.98.1028) are available in the University of New Mexico's digital electronic repository (http://repository.unm.edu ; Conrad et al., 2015). We used the R package vegan for diversity analyses (Oksanen et al., 2015). Measured stable isotope values, provenience, and turkey skeletal information are

4.1 Turkey bone analyses

Both turkey relative abundance and overall taxonomic evenness show little change through time (Fig. 4). Turkeys comprise a modest but stable portion of the faunal assemblage, ranging between 2% (152 out of 6400) and 13% (317 out of 2414) of total NISP, with a mean value of 6 ± 3.8% (Fig. 4). Taxonomic evenness values are high, ranging between 7.0 and 10.8 with a mean value of 9.2 ± 1.3.

Stable isotope results suggest that the majority of the Arroyo Hondo turkeys consumed a C4-based diet (Fig. 5,

5. Discussion

Previous zooarchaeological research suggests that Southwestern turkey husbandry began to shift towards increased economic use during Pueblo III in the Four Corners region (Akins, 1985, Badenhorst and Driver, 2009, Beacham and Durand, 2007, Windes, 1977). We tested whether these patterns of use were also present in the Pueblo IV Northern Rio Grande using bones and eggshells from Arroyo Hondo Pueblo. Given previous stable isotope and SEM analyses, we expected that eggshell would indicate eggs

6. Conclusions

Puebloan occupants of Arroyo Hondo exploited both the turkey and the egg, but to differing degrees and in different ways. Turkey eggs were used as a resource in their own right, but whether the apparent predominance of this activity suggested by our results reflects ceremonial activities, turkey or human subsistence, or recovery/sampling biases remains unclear. On the other hand, both isotope values and turkey abundance suggest domestic turkeys were carefully husbanded; the stability of this

Acknowledgements

We thank Lisa Barrera, Jennifer Day, Laura Elliff, Cynthia Geoghegan, Nicole Taylor (SAR) and Dave Phillips (Maxwell Museum) for loan and grant assistance; Heather Edgar, Sherry Nelson, and Michael Spilde at the University of New Mexico for laboratory access; Nicu-Viorel Atudorei and Laura Burkemper for analytical assistance; Brad Beacham, Leigh Cominiello, Kathy Durand-Gore, Brenna Lissoway, Ben Marwick, and Gavin Simpson for help along the way; and two anonymous reviewers for extremely

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