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Where in the World? Part Three: The Zooarchaeology of the Americas - Ep 47
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Welcome to episode three of a miniseries focusing on the zooarchaeology of various world regions. This episode is centered around American zooarchaeology, focusing on the natural history and anatomy of the most prominent wild and domesticated species found throughout North and South America. Tune in for beaver-pretenders, bison-cattle hybrids and even more moose/elk arguments!
Connect with James on Twitter: @paleoimaging
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/animals/47
Links
- Anning, C. (2011) Inca success in Peruvian Andes 'thanks to llama dung'. BBC News.
- Crader, D. C. (1997). Prehistoric use of beaver in coastal Maine (USA). Anthropozoologica, 25(26), 225-236.
- - Halbert, N. et al. (2007). "Where the buffalo roam: The role of history and genetics in the conservation of bison on U.S. federal lands". Park Science. 24 (2): 22–29.
- Hirst, K.K. (2018) Llamas and Alpacas: The Domestication History of Camelids in South America. ThoughtCo.
- Hubbard, T. (2014). Buffalo Genocide in Nineteenth-Century North America. Colonial genocide in indigenous North America, 292-305.
- Petrigh, R. S., & Fugassa, M. H. (2013). Molecular identification of a Fuegian dog belonging to the Fagnano Regional Museum ethnographic collection, Tierra del Fuego. Quaternary International, 317, 14-18.
- Miller, G. R. (2003). Food for the dead, tools for the afterlife: Zooarchaeology at Machu Picchu. In Burger, R. L., and Salazar, L. C. (eds.), The 1912 Yale Peruvian Scientific Expedition Collections from Machu Picchu: Human and Animal Remains.
- Saunders, N. J. (1994). Predators of Culture: Jaguar Symbolism and Mesoamerican Elites. World Archaeology, 26(1), 104–117.
- Speller, C. F. et al. (2010). "Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals complexity of indigenous North American Canham domestication". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (7): 2807–2812.
- Turner, B. L., and Armelagos, G. J. (2012). "Diet, residential origin, and pathology at Machu Picchu, Peru". American Journal of Physical Anthropology. 149 (1): 71–83.
- https://historicjamestowne.org/collections/artifacts/faunal-material/
- https://blog.nature.org/science/2017/11/20/tracing-the-wild-origins-of-the-domestic-turkey/
Contact
- Alex FitzpatrickTwitter: @archaeologyfitz
- Simona FalangaTwitter: @CrazyBoneLady
- Alex’s Blog: Animal Archaeology
- Music "Coconut - (dyalla remix)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2UiKoouqaY
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Transcript
Introduction to Archaeo-Animals
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
Introduction to 'Where in the World' Mini-Series
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Archaeo-Animals, the podcast all about zoarchaeology. I'm Alex Fitzpatrick and with me as always, Sibora Falanga.
Zooarchaeology of the Americas
00:00:30
Speaker
We are introducing our newest installment of our latest mini-series titled Where in the World, which is again a testament to how good I am with titles. And it's led us kind of, you know...
00:00:47
Speaker
break out of our British shells and enter other parts of the world, take a look at the zoo archaeology there. And we've broken them up into continents for ease, because obviously we could spend probably the next decade if we wanted to go like country through country, which we if you want us to do that, let us know.
Wild Species of the Americas
00:01:06
Speaker
I can already picture an episode like in 50 years time. So this is episode two thousand and thirty six of archaeo animals.
00:01:15
Speaker
where in the world. But yeah, I feel like continents was probably the best. Obviously, we're still kind of generalizing here. But you know, I feel like continents good because at least we can kind of break it down to regions, although I guess this episode is a bit different because we will be tackling two continents. We will be looking at North and South America, which is where I'm from. So finally,
00:01:40
Speaker
It is my time to shine and not know anything about Americans and archaeology. But yeah, so like, we'll just look at some of the most sort of prevalent, like wild species that are native to the region. And then there's always what we've decided is your favorite, the case studies. Yes. And no one can argue with me about that, because what I say is law, basically. Apparently. Anyway, yeah, well,
00:02:07
Speaker
Just say yes. Anyway, we'll start off with the wild species as we've been doing in the previous episodes. And we're going to start off with a species that we kind of talked about because I just I just need to keep talking about it because it's so weird. It's the North American moose slash elk, also known as alches, alches. And as always, Simona will be forced to do the Latin because
00:02:32
Speaker
Come on, folks, it just sounds so much better when she says it. Allegedly, yeah. But yeah, because that's one of the weird things, because of course, in the Italian for the North American moose, very much mirrors the Latin. So it's just Alce, so there's not much confusion there. But of course, in British English, moose,
00:02:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty hard. It's really hard to get your mind around it. So what we're talking about in this episode is a moose, like an actual moose, like rocky and boingal moose, okay? It's not what the British seem to understand a moose is. They call it an elk. In North America, this is a moose. And the reason for that is because in North America, elks refer to a completely different species. Yeah, because that would be a cherbus canadensis, also known as the guapiti.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah, which is originating from the similar word wapiti from the Shawnee and Cree, which means white rump.
American Bison: Ecological and Cultural Significance
00:03:35
Speaker
So mind blown, really annoying. I wish we'd all just agree on one word. But hey, why not make it confusing? And to be honest, this is going to be a bit of a recurring theme in this episode in terms of just extremely confusing terminology. So I guess it's
00:03:53
Speaker
Look at that, looking at it, now the Wapiti looks a lot more like what is similar to our Red Deer. Which is actually our North American boost. I know, it's very confusing, but
00:04:09
Speaker
We're talking about moose, so picture in your head a moose, like the moose, a moose, Canadian moose. Because interestingly, moose are found throughout Canada, as well as northern parts of the United States, such as upstate New York, Michigan, places like that, I think. And interestingly, you can actually tell the difference between the North American moose and the Eurasian moose, because of course there is a Eurasian moose, not elk.
00:04:35
Speaker
Just, you know, whatever. So the North American moose have these really distinctive wide antlers and they've got these two lobes on each side, kind of like a butterfly, but their Eurasian cousins only have one lobe, which look closer to what you would expect from other elk. This is so confusing. Oh my gosh. I guess the term would be, I guess, would it be a palmate?
00:05:02
Speaker
Because it's very similar in the fallow deer in Europe, you get sort of like that formation. But we're talking about moose. The New York American moose. Alches, alches, everyone.
00:05:17
Speaker
It is it is so confusing. I actually when we originally wrote these show notes, I wrote the wrong Latin down. So yeah, let's move past it because I can't I can't even think about it longer than. Which one did you put out of interest? I put the elk. I'm not helping. I'm not helping.
00:05:34
Speaker
So yeah, let's move on to something a bit more easy to understand, like the American bison, which Latin name is? Well, bison, bison, or I guess, bison, bison, really. Now, the problem is that it's also known as a buffalo. The problem, of course, is that buffalo is also used to refer to other types of bovine species, including the water buffalo or the African buffalo. But we're talking about bison, but they're also known as buffalo. But a bison is not a buffalo.
00:06:02
Speaker
Now, and also just to make it more interesting, so I mean, there's there's various subspecies of the American bison. So you have the wood bison, so bison, bison, Athabashi, and then there's the plains bison, bison, bison, bison.
00:06:18
Speaker
if anyone remembers our gorilla gorilla gorilla from a previous episode it carries on just to make sure it is exactly a bison it's a bison bison bison this one although the latter has been proposed to be actually two different subspecies within itself so with the plains bison referring to the southern plains bison and also the northern plains bison bison bison montane
00:06:41
Speaker
However, this is still debated, so we've mentioned this information and now we're going to move away from it. The American bison is most likely known for being a significant part of the subsequent strategies of various indigenous peoples of the Great Plains regions of the United States, which includes tribes as the Cheyenne, the Comanche and the Pawnee, among many others.
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, unfortunately, I think what a lot of people think of when you think of the American Bison, unless you're thinking of, of course, the idealistic Southwest Plains, which Bison are obviously very prevalent in images and things like that. Unfortunately, another thing they're very well known for is there are, you can probably find them if you just look up American Bison photos. There are a lot of photos from the
00:07:37
Speaker
want to say 19th century-ish of white American settlers standing on top of or posing near thousands and thousands of bison bones. As part of the United States government's kind of settler colonialist violence against Indigenous people, they obviously realized that bison were such a major part of
00:08:00
Speaker
not only subsistence, but also the cultures of the Plains Native Americans. And they decided to systematically target and massacre the bison and just absolutely devastate the populations. So you have these really gnarly, horrible photos of just, again, thousands of bison that have been killed. I mean, there's
00:08:20
Speaker
Although the stories of, because obviously the US army would put out bounties, there were hunters that would have kills up to like, you know, 6,000 bison that they were able to kill. So it's really horrific. And sadly, probably like one of the more well known parts of the American bison history and the kind of zoo archaeology around it.
00:08:44
Speaker
That being said, I didn't want to end on that kind of note. So on a somewhat lighter note, bison have been historically crossbred with cattle, both on purpose by farmers as well as accidentally, and we won't go into that, but they have been referred to, the crossbred species has been referred to as catalo.
00:09:07
Speaker
wasn't there like an article years ago, so one of those like feel good articles about the sort of the scowl that had run away and somehow been accepted into a herd of bison? Yeah, I vaguely remember that. Actually, not you say that. But yeah, I mean, it's one of those I am obviously very tickled by
00:09:27
Speaker
crossbred species that have ridiculous names, like a catalo. Although again, it's kind of playing into that buffalo misnomer, where it's actually bison. So I guess it would be caddis, caddison. Bicow?
North American Beavers and Misleading Names
00:09:44
Speaker
No, that just sounds like a cat with two heads. Bital? Bissell? This is why we don't name new things as zoarchaeologists. We just kind of pick up old stuff.
00:09:59
Speaker
Well, you know. Catalo, like you could also sound like a weird, like, hybrid between a buffalo and a cat.
00:10:06
Speaker
Oh boy. No, just no. No. Move away from that. The North American bee bash. Let's go back. We just want to think about how cute a catalo is. What are you talking about? Like a big cat? Like a really big cat? Maybe that's more of my misunderstanding what a crossbred cat and buffalo would be because I'm imagining a really big cat.
00:10:32
Speaker
I'm picturing a really big cat with equally big horns, so they will probably rule us all. Yeah, actually, no, that'd still be cool. I don't know what you're talking about. Our new cattle overlords. We can only help. Anyway, yeah, let's move on to the North American beaver. His species name was actually more like Canadian beaver because it's Castor canadensis.
00:10:55
Speaker
This is true, but to be fair, it's because, you know, Canada is North America. Sorry, that's the worst, your bubble. Oh, boy, we really went into a tizzy after we talked about all that naming conventions. It's like North America is a big place and Canada is part of it, but does not represent the entirety of North America.
00:11:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we pretend that Canada is not part of it. Just kidding. Love you, Canadians, kind of. I don't know. I've only been in Canada like twice. Although native to North America, the beaver has also been introduced to parts of Northern Europe as well as South America.
00:11:39
Speaker
So yeah, although it is native to North America, the beaver has also been introduced to parts of Northern Europe as well as South America. I believe it's been introduced to places like Finland, Scandinavia, parts of Europe like that. And again, to kind of continue this trend of
00:11:58
Speaker
extremely frustrating and difficult to really comprehend naming conventions and fake naming conventions. We are talking about true beavers here, and not the fake beavers known as the mountain beaver, which isn't a beaver.
00:12:19
Speaker
Really? Pretend a beaver. It's a rodent, like a non-beaver rodent. So don't know what that's about. The Aplodontia ruffa, which is actually the only member of its genus. Yeah. And it pretends to be a beaver. Well, they're the only living member of its genus, but clearly wants to be a beaver.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, it's... I don't. And you know what, this isn't the only fake species that we'll be talking about in this episode. This is an extremely cursed episode now that I'm thinking about it. It is very cute though, but apparently it's close as relative or actually squirrels.
00:12:58
Speaker
You know what, I can, yeah, I can see that, to be honest. Yeah, those incisors are very similar, aren't they? It looks like an angry quokka. Hmm, yeah, I can see that. Do you want to explain what a quokka is to the listening audience? Oh, the quokka is a marsupial, I think, found in parts of Australia that I believe a few years ago has been voted the happiest animal on the planet.
00:13:21
Speaker
Not because it was particularly happy, but it just looks happy because I think that the facial expression, it just looks and they're constantly smiling. I was gonna say, like, how do you even measure that? They asked them, of course, little mic.
00:13:36
Speaker
I said, hello, Mr. Quokka, but are you happy? I mean, that could be an episode. If you guys want to hear us interview animals with a small bike, let us know. We'll do it. Yeah, so the distribution along some of the smaller islands off the coast of Western Australia is where they're at.
00:13:55
Speaker
So there you go, but we're not talking about Australia, not yet anyway. No, not yet. So back to the pretender beaver of North America, habladontia rufa. But we're not even talking about them, we're talking about the actual North American beaver, aren't we? Yeah.
00:14:10
Speaker
Beavers were actually historically used by many indigenous peoples for a variety of reasons, but mainly for meat. And actually, they use their massive incisors as well, which, as you can understand, were very useful as tools. I mean, look at those things. They are basically natural tools for beavers. So unsurprisingly, they were often used by indigenous people as well to kind of create various tools.
00:14:37
Speaker
And their fur would ultimately remain extremely important for, unfortunately, the later European colonial settlers as they would build their trade in the north and set outposts specifically
Jaguars in Mesoamerican Culture
00:14:51
Speaker
for beaver trade.
00:14:53
Speaker
So is this a trend? Yeah, might be a trend. There's a couple trends going on here. But yeah, it's actually really interesting in that I kind of never really thought about beaver being used for meat, but obviously a lot of those are archaeological evidence that we find for beaver. You do see those very indicative kind of butchery marks on limbs and things like that, which is
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's very interesting. I mean, that's been kind of the nice thing about this series we've been doing is not only are we talking a lot about different regions, but also different species and kind of learning new ways that these species were kind of important.
00:15:33
Speaker
Although the next one I feel like kind of new already because it's the jaguar. Jaguar is how you say it in the UK, right? Jaguar. Jaguar. Jaguar. Jaguar. That's how I would say it. Pantera Onca. Yes.
00:15:49
Speaker
So jaguars are the only member of the Pantera genus to be native to the Americas. And so it's basically the largest cat on both continents. And, you know, the jaguar is probably one of the most important symbolic animals.
00:16:05
Speaker
For the cultures, particularly in South America, many of the Mesoamerican cultures would use depictions of jaguars not only in their religions, as obviously there were many jaguar-based gods, but they also used the animal as a symbol of power.
00:16:23
Speaker
And jaguars are kind of really cool because they would either be represented very naturalistically as, you know, a jaguar on four limbs or as these hybrid creatures with humanistic features like the Olmec culture would often depict what is preferred to commonly as were jaguars, which were these like warriors that were also jaguars. And they're unsurprisingly very important to ritual.
00:16:51
Speaker
So you often find their remains buried as ritual deposits in places such as Teotihuacan alongside other grave goods such as obsidian and greenstone. So they're pretty cool, to be
Domesticated Animals in the Americas
00:17:06
Speaker
honest. And there's where jaguars, which is just awesome. But yeah, luckily we were able to finish this segment without any really frustrating naming conventions for the jaguar. So thank you to the jaguar for that.
00:17:20
Speaker
That being said, when we enter our next segment after the break, we may hit some more confusion. It's about llamas and alpacas, folks. Strap in. Oh, I'll look in.
00:17:34
Speaker
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00:18:14
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo-animals. And this episode, we're looking at the zoarchaeology of the Americas, so North and South America. And in this segment, we'll be going from the wild species to the domesticus that are normally found in this region.
Llamas in Pre-Columbian Cultures
00:18:30
Speaker
And unfortunately, that means we are going to have to talk about the llamas and the alpacas, which is
00:18:37
Speaker
A bit confusing sometimes. For anyone who's interested though, we do have, like early on in our catalogue, we do have an episode that's entirely devoted to South American camelids. I think we talked a bit about how they're different, but I don't know if we got into the nitty gritty about the domestication. Well, they were probably domesticated in several locations at several different points in time. Oh, they were.
00:19:02
Speaker
But anyway, it's the good news that we are moving because while we are covering both North and South America, it has been so far fairly North American oriented with the exception of the jaguar. So with a few species, we're starting to slowly move south. Yeah. So we'll start with the llama.
00:19:20
Speaker
Lamma Glamma, which is just a delightful Latin name. So, llamas are, as we've kind of just said, South American domesticated camelids. They were used for meats and for their wool, as well as a pack animal across many different cultures and civilizations and are still used like that today, to be completely honest.
00:19:43
Speaker
And I believe that they were very vital to a lot of Mesoamerican and pre-Columbian trade routes because of their ability to be beasts of burden and pack animals. So they're extremely important to the development of a lot of these civilizations in South America.
00:20:06
Speaker
And they were likely domesticated from a wild species of camelid known as the guanaco, which occurred probably around 6,500 years ago, so like 6,000, 7,000 years ago, give or take.
00:20:28
Speaker
And like I said, they were used by the Inca as visa burden, and obviously that meant that lama herding was actually very common among the Incan people and very, very important to their everyday life.
Alpacas: Domestication and Cultural Roles
00:20:42
Speaker
And given this importance,
00:20:44
Speaker
it's probably not surprising that llama remains have been found in many human burials. So, you know, as kind of grave goods buried alongside humans, it kind of varies because it's not just in the Incan Empire, but also in many pre-Incan civilizations as well, such as the Moche, where llamas were likely offerings to the dead and thus buried with them.
00:21:12
Speaker
similar but different on the llama is the alpaca, so the llama pacos, which they're often confused with llamas, because well, they do kind of look alike, but they're smaller. And actually, I believe their wool is a little bit sort of finer or softer. Yeah. So actually slight digression, I believe the two are more than likely were in the past, often hybridized. So you could get the size of a llama, but the wool quality of an alpaca.
00:21:42
Speaker
But did they have a cute hybrid name? Lalpaca. Alama. The puns are endless. But Alpacas, as you may have suspected, are also South American domesticated camelids, but they are likely domesticated from the Vicuña. So Vicuña, Vicuña, which is also another type of wild camelid.
00:22:07
Speaker
Yeah, so basically you have two wild camelids. You have the vicunya and you have the guanaco, and then they were domesticated. Again, roughly around the same time, both alpacas and llamas were both
00:22:24
Speaker
domesticated probably around 6,500 years ago. And of course, they create two other domesticated camelids that are different from each other. I believe the vicuña is also similar to how the alpaca is smaller than the llama. The vicuña is smaller than the guanaco. And again, much like the llama,
00:22:46
Speaker
Unsurprisingly, Alpacas were important for their war, but also just as symbolically and ritually important to pre-Columbian culture such as Damas. So an example of this has been found at the Chiribaya culture site of El Yeral, where they found naturally mummified Alpaca and Lamas buried in the house foundations.
Turkeys: From Domestication to Europe
00:23:08
Speaker
So likely, you know, potentially sacrifices at some point. To do with that is a trend that you see pretty much all over.
00:23:16
Speaker
Yeah, I was just going to say, like, it's really interesting that that seems to be, because I mean, you know, I'm always wary about doing kind of cross-cultural, you know, comparisons, because obviously people, a lot of people who do do that have very problematic beliefs in, say, ancient aliens and things like that. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's to kind of go in a bit of a tangent. I really got to experience this when I went to American Stonehenge, which I don't know if you know about American Stonehenge. Do I want to? It's in New Hampshire, I think. It's on the East Coast.
00:23:57
Speaker
And it's referred to as American Stonehenge. And a lot of the kind of evidence is that there's, oh, there's Phoenician carvings. And it's so similar to Stonehenge in Britain that it has to have been made by the same people. Now, I do want to say that as an actual archaeologist who went to American Stonehenge, it absolutely looks like 18th century shelters built
00:24:26
Speaker
by with rocks, like, you know, how you find in places like in Europe, like, you know, like a shelter you'd make for like livestock, kind of. That's that's what I like. But, you know, American Stonehenge, whatever. And so it was just very funny to like see all the comparative stuff of like, oh, it's just like this place here.
00:24:51
Speaker
So I'm very worried about doing that. But it is impossible to fathom that different cultures can come up with similar concepts completely independently of each other. Oh, no, absolutely not. But like that that is the actual good and fun part of that isn't it is kind of like, I think more the way I see it is just like it's the human mind.
00:25:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting because I assume this is what you were going to bring up originally, and I think we have talked about foundational deposits before, right? Of course, they're common across many cultures, but then again, the evidence that we find might be similar
00:25:32
Speaker
But the motives may be wildly different. For sure. And some of them we'll never know about. Yeah. So it's interesting to see like, you know, the human mind is sort of like this sort of having similar concepts. But of course, they're also different. Yeah, like, especially reading about the fact that these were naturally mummified alpaca llamas that were buried underneath the house foundations, obviously,
00:25:55
Speaker
speaking as someone who's done a lot of prehistoric British and Scottish archaeology, we find loads of kind of these house foundation deposits up in the Orkneys. We have lots of kind of pickedish buildings where if we pulled up the flooring and you could find like a whole cow, you know, like all these kind of animals that were placed underneath
00:26:19
Speaker
The foundations, but the fact that they mentioned that these alpaca and llamas were mummified immediately made me think of there's a site in Scotland called Cloud Hala. I think it's Cloud Hala. That's the one I'm talking about. A lot of these were in my PhD lit review, so kind of all smushed into one.
00:26:40
Speaker
they had kind of a similar thing where there were kind of these foundational deposits but and they were human remains they were mummified or preserved in some way i think the original theory was that they might have been placed in the bog and then reburied uh not reburied but excavated back out and then placed underneath the foundation but they were also it was like a body that was kind of made out of
00:27:06
Speaker
different individuals. It was very interesting, but it's kind of interesting. The motivations, like, I wish we had some time travel, just like, why? Very cool. But like, is there a mention, so like, at El Yeral, like, do we know sort of whether the
00:27:24
Speaker
mummification was intentional and then placed? Or is this something with a taphon with a taphonomy? So with the particular environment, because I know parts of South America, you know, they lend themselves better to natural mummification than say, Britain? Yeah, I mean, you see a lot of pre Columbian mummies, don't you? And I believe that it is specifically naturally mummified, in that it doesn't seem like there's any human
00:27:49
Speaker
motivation towards it, but the problem is obviously, you know, you could easily argue, oh, they could have somehow died underneath the House Foundation, you know what I mean? So it's a bit, I don't know. I'm not sure if there were any other, I assume there must be other kind of artifactual associated with the site to kind of help with that interpretation, but still very interesting. And it was just something I kind of wanted to note, because
00:28:13
Speaker
you know, we talk about domestication, sometimes we don't talk about the crossover between domestication and ritual. Although that's a lie, we talk about it all the time, don't we? Just as part of the bingo. If we mention the Romans, if we mention ritual, but here's one that's definitely not part of a bingo, because I don't think we ever mentioned the species before.
00:28:33
Speaker
It's a domestic turkey. Take a shot of that word. Why do I ever doubt you? But yeah, I think we may have briefly talked about the turkey when we did our episode on holiday meals. We would
Extinct Fuegian Dog and Its Cultural History
00:28:50
Speaker
have done. Yeah, but it's something again, because we tend to be fairly British centric. The turkey is something that doesn't come up until sort of the post medieval period here.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I definitely don't think we've talked about the domestication of the Turkey, which obviously was domesticated from the wild Turkey of Mexico. Of course. And of course, the Turkey would eventually make its way to Europe via the Spanish colonizers, who would ship them back as well as spread throughout the Americas, because obviously Turkey is just
00:29:23
Speaker
pretty much everywhere now, similar to the chicken, but yeah. Do you think they were part of someone's foul collection? Oh, absolutely. Yes, although the main investigation event was likely in Mesoamerica around 2000 years ago, there may have been a second domestication event at some point, approximately 1000 years ago in what is now the southwest of the United States.
00:29:46
Speaker
Yeah, so again, that's probably indicative of how it really spread around the Americas. And of course, because we are, you know, England centric, we do need to give a shout out to the man who did introduce the turkey to England during the 16th century. His name is William Strickland. So thank him for your Christmas dinner if you're in England, I guess.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah, apparently he is obviously so noted for this that on his family crest, there's a turkey. I mean, why wouldn't there be? Yeah, so I guess you might as well own it. I guess they all over the range of the time. So are pineapples. Around that time period, you see pineapple sculptures coming up left, right, and center in England. It's like, oh, pineapples.
00:30:32
Speaker
Yeah, and obviously, you know, we really haven't talked about Turkey, but I don't know about you if you really come across Turkey very often, but I've always found it kind of hard to identify against chicken bones sometimes. No, because again, like Turkey, you don't have to find them for the post medieval period, so they don't come up like too often. But I think the giveaway is the massive size difference. So if it's something that's galliform,
00:30:58
Speaker
But it's huge, okay, Turkey. And then it's like, oh, that's just messed up my dating. But yeah, I mean, obviously, I think the issue is also I feel like domestic foul, a lot of it tends to look very similar sometimes, which is why, you know, I hate to admit it, but sometimes you just got to write domestic fouls, the identification and hope for the best. It's just the thing with birds in general, because I mean, like domestic foul,
00:31:24
Speaker
Okay, like between various species, it can be a little bit tricky, but you can tell apart sort of like, okay, this is galliform. Yeah, yeah. But then everything else, there are so many different species of wild birds and all like itty bitty like tiny phones, that unless you have like all of the reference material, you'll never like or something robin sized, but like there's a million birds that are robin sized. So it's like, yeah,
00:31:48
Speaker
And all those are specialized in bird bones. You are heroes. Absolute heroes to us. The only thing that's only slightly worse than fish are birds, as everyone knows. So, you know, not much we can do about that. Anyway, you know, turkeys were obviously used for meat, but they were actually also used for their feathers and bones. And something that I actually had no idea about, and this is extremely cool, is that we have kind of
00:32:17
Speaker
some written texts about Aztec use of turkeys. So there was a Franciscan monk, Bernardino de Sahagun, who wrote probably one of the earliest kind of ethnographic studies known as the Florentine Codex. And he basically
00:32:37
Speaker
did these ethnographic studies of the Aztecs during the 16th century. And I believe they even had some of the Aztec people do some of the illustrations, which is so cool. And that's how we actually know how Turkey was used in Aztec cuisine. It was mainly roasted or boiled. It was sometimes served in a stew of corn or sometimes with a mole sauce. And it was also often used as tamale filling.
00:33:06
Speaker
Sounds good. And our final species that we'll be talking about is sadly an extinct species. It is the Phuijian dog, also known as the Yagan dog, and it is a now extinct domesticated canid.
00:33:25
Speaker
Unlike other domesticated dogs, of course, we've talked about at length, I feel like on this episode, not on this episode, but in previous episodes, we've talked about domesticated dogs and they were mostly domesticated from the gray wolf. Canis lupus. Of course, which we did. Oh, I didn't. I just realized I don't think I gave you a chance to say the Latin word for the the Fuegin dog. Licalopex culpeus. Thank you. I'm so sorry for that. Oh, no, yes, you're quite all right.
00:33:54
Speaker
Well, to be fair, it's also the same name for what the Fuegian dog was likely domesticated from, which is the Culpeo, which is also. Oh, Licaloplex Culpeos. Okay, so how was it, how was it domesticated? So if it wasn't, if it didn't speciate
00:34:16
Speaker
I think it may have speciated and they just, because it was an extinct species and we actually don't really have that much information about it, they may not have given it a specific, or I must have miswrote this, which is probably the more likely thing.
00:34:30
Speaker
Okay, so maybe if they were just very tame, but like they're not quite domestic, you know, like the, so the reindeer. It's funny because we don't know that much. There, there are some taxidermied and obviously some remains. So that has been kind of semi recently. There's been a lot of genetics work done on it to kind of look at where it mostly domesticated from.
00:34:55
Speaker
I think this is kind of recent this that the copayo has been noted as where domesticated from and the copayo is a species of south american fox which okay to get back to this kind of confusing stuff wasn't actually a fox
00:35:11
Speaker
or a true fox, like the true beaver, it was more closely related to wolves and jackals. Everything is so confusing in the Americas. But yeah, so we don't actually have that much, like, ethnographic evidence as to how the Fuygen dog was really used or why they were domesticated. They may have been used, domesticated to hunt otters.
00:35:35
Speaker
And we don't really know the exact reasons for their extermination other than they may have been too dangerous around livestock. But I just thought it was really interesting because, you know, you don't really get to talk about these extinct domesticated cannons, which there are a few species. So they're very cute, because I've noticed like the wild counterpart is alive and well.
Jamestown's Zooarchaeological Findings
00:35:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's very, it's very strange, isn't it strange? It's kind of
00:35:59
Speaker
It's fox-sized, but it's got the colouring... It's very confusing. It's a very cute papa. It does have a bit of a foxy face. Yeah, it's the theme of the episode. Everything is very confusing. To me, it truly looks like a cross between a dog, like a generic dog and a red fox.
00:36:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's, like I said, very confusing, the zoo archeology of the Americas. So I think as we kind of figure out what this is, we will take a break and come back for the case studies.
00:36:36
Speaker
And we are back with archaeo animals. We are talking about the zoo archaeology of the Americas, so North and South America. And we are now at again, I always say it. No one cares. I'll keep saying it because I don't know. Maybe maybe it's like I'm going to wish it into existence that people love this part of the episode. But I guess it's it's a good part of the episode. I don't know. It's the case studies.
00:37:02
Speaker
Maybe it's our favorite part and we're just projecting. We might be projecting, but it is fun. I mean, I feel like the case studies are good and they're very important. It helps people understand in action what we're talking about, hopefully.
00:37:18
Speaker
So we're going to start with the zoo archaeology of Jamestown, which is located in the United States. So Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It was established in 1607, briefly abandoned in 1610, and then permanently settled by the English colonizers afterwards. So Jamestown is located in what is now the state of Virginia, which is located on Seneca Maco land.
00:37:47
Speaker
Now, Jamesone is actually kind of a, I'm trying to think of what the equivalent would be in England because I assume they must have like reenactment type places, kind of. More like specific places where people do reenactment?
00:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, like, so Jamestown is a very obviously it's a very big touristy place. I've definitely gone there at least twice in grade school because I lived in New York, which isn't that far from Virginia. You know, it's a couple hour drive, but they have it is kind of interesting. Obviously, they've they've got kind of recreations along the buildings. You can go there. The people who work there are often in character recreating
00:38:34
Speaker
life in Jamestown. I guess you have sort of up north, is it like Beadsworld and the Beamish? Just sort of much later. Well, not Beadsworld, obviously. Yeah, because I was trying to think of because obviously we have a lot of
00:38:51
Speaker
reinterpretation sites and places that are made to kind of look like what they used to, you know, obviously we talked a lot about like Butzer Farm and places like that. I was trying to think of if there's places where they actually have people like in character as ye olde timey thing. And then I was thinking, is that a very American thing or what?
00:39:10
Speaker
Yeah, because I'm not sure if they do that. But I can think like the one thing, yes, the beam is just open air museum in the northeast of England. So so that tells sort of the story of daily life in northeast England, so in the 19th, like slash 20th century. Okay.
00:39:26
Speaker
Yeah, so when you go to Jamestown, you like I said, there's lots of people. They're all dressed up. They're doing like farming. There's obviously someone doing black smithery, things like that. It's very, very common. I feel like around a lot of the Northeast states, because obviously that's where a lot of the original colonies were. So places like that and Williamsburg.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's a very American thing and apparently the only thing I can remember from ever going to Jamestown was buying sticks of honey and eating them. So really made an impression on an early archaeologist.
00:40:07
Speaker
Anyway, what we really want to talk about, though, is the zoo archaeology of Jamestown. And it's actually really interesting. So, you know, in our previous episodes that we've done for this miniseries, we've talked a lot about sites that, you know, either they were either kind of sites that were massive settlement places where you had loads of different kind of
00:40:32
Speaker
explorations as to what the diet was, where they were getting it, trade and stuff like that. And then I guess the other kind of examples that we've been looking at have been trade ports, because obviously it's really interesting to see the zoo archaeology of places where things were coming and going, you know, and being traded. And James sounds kind of interesting, because obviously it is a colony.
Isotopic Analysis of Machu Picchu
00:40:55
Speaker
So you already have that kind of
00:40:57
Speaker
component to it, but it's the first permanent one. So it's a very new colony and it's settlers who are trying to survive in a very new colonized territory. So it was unsurprisingly rough to say the least.
00:41:16
Speaker
And it's through the kind of zooarchaeological analysis that we've been able to better understand what is known as the starving times, which unsurprisingly refers to a period of starvation during the winter of 1609 to about 1610. And it was so rough that basically the population of the colony reduced from 500 people to about 61. So
00:41:40
Speaker
Yeah, when they're not really kidding when they say starving times. So there's been a lot of archaeological analysis looking at kind of deposits dating to the period before the starving times and then deposits that are associated with the starving times.
00:41:59
Speaker
and it's so clear the difference. So from pre-starving times to like 1607 to 1608, you start to see mostly, you know, butchered deer, fish, bird bones. I mean, a lot of this is pre them bringing over a lot of the kind of animals that would eventually be, you know, more domesticated on these settlements. So a lot of them are
00:42:23
Speaker
you know, really focused on deer, fish and bird that are more native. But then as you go to the Starving Times during 1609 to 1610, the composition of the archaeological record becomes completely different. It's squirrel, rat, snake, dog and horse. And, you know, obviously, if you saw that, you'd be like, oh, maybe that's wild deposits, but they were all butchered. So clearly they were just eating anything they could get.
00:42:53
Speaker
And also, especially things like horse should leave that as a last resort because they are quite valuable. For sure, yeah. I mean, I think horse is probably the real smoking gun there because that is extremely last case. And again, the population reduced so drastically. So it was real dire times. But it is interesting because I think we have talked previously as well about
00:43:22
Speaker
how zoarchologically you can see these kind of shifts in species and how you can interpret things like famine from them. I mean, I think in our previous episode, we kind of talked about how you can see the difference between early settlement when they would eat, I think it was mostly like cow
00:43:44
Speaker
and things like that, but as they ran out of space, they had to turn to, oh no, it was the opposite. They originally ate something like sheep, and then as they ran out of space, they turned to imported cattle. So it's really interesting, I feel like.
00:43:58
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess also like dog is like fairly like usually a red flag as well because also dogs do tend to be quite useful and used for a variety of jobs or so. And is there any evidence of what may have brought that on because you know, they've been there sort of previously was here particularly harsh winter, but do we know?
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah, it was just it was a harsh winter. And obviously, and I think this is a very recurring theme in a lot of the early settlements in North America by by colonizers is that they just weren't prepared. There was obviously before Jamestown, there was the Roanoke colony, which is very infamous because it basically vanished. No one really knows what happened to the colonists there. There's obviously a complete failure.
00:44:43
Speaker
Jamestown I think came afterwards, but you know, you have, there's a lot of other stories and you know, obviously even like Plymouth is very similar that they just, the winters were harsh. They weren't really ready for that. And they just, because they would also like have to wait ages for rest of their supplies to come through, you basically, a lot of these colonies just completely like struggled in that first year or so, especially during the winter.
00:45:11
Speaker
And then we'll be moving to South America in case study. We'll be looking at the zoo archaeology of Machu Picchu in Peru. So Machu Picchu is the site of a 15th century Incan citadel, which is located in southern Peru. It has been recently proposed that the site was originally made to be an estate for the Incan emperor Pachacuti and was likely inhabited between 1420 and 1532.
00:45:40
Speaker
Now, they've carried out some isotopic analysis on the remains found at Machu Picchu. Now, isotopic analysis is something that archaeologists do that informs on the diet of past populations, but also through that you're able to pinpoint the origin
00:46:03
Speaker
or whether there's any evidence of migration. Normally, I believe it's teeth that you look at, because our bones remodel roughly every 10 years. Normally, when you look at the bones, anything they extract from the bones will tend to reflect anything from the last 10 years of your life, while the teeth will provide inference on the time when they actually formed.
Ritualistic Deposits at Machu Picchu
00:46:26
Speaker
Generally, that will be childhood.
00:46:28
Speaker
Yeah, so especially when you're doing human bones, technically, as long as you have usable collagen. So I have done isotopic analysis on arguably the worst thing you could do it on, which is fish bones. It was, let me tell you, it was a massive struggle, as you can imagine, to get collagen out of fish vertebra. But by God, I did it.
00:46:54
Speaker
It kind of explains my hatred towards fish, I think. But yeah, so basically, for humans, you would definitely want to use teeth. Isotope analysis is actually extremely powerful in terms of archaeological sciences. You can, as Simona said, you can look at diet. Diet is like the big one, but also you can look at
00:47:15
Speaker
migration and things like that and it is extremely useful and obviously it's become even more important as genetic studies and ancient DNA have become more usable and more popular because obviously it helps kind of supplement that information.
00:47:33
Speaker
for diet mainly, I guess what you'll be looking at is the nitrogen values, if you know correctly. So of course the nitrogen, I guess the more meat-based your diet is, the higher your nitrogen levels will be. Actually, if you have a marine diet, that will have the highest amount of nitrogen of all, correct me if I'm wrong.
00:47:54
Speaker
No, yes. So you basically have nitrogen and you have carbon. So you're kind of looking at the way those are balanced. And as you say, if you have a very, very high nitrogen values, then you definitely have what is more of a marine diet. So like when I was looking at fish,
00:48:13
Speaker
Which sounds, again, ridiculous to be like, why would you look at fish? You know what they're eating. It was to compare the nitrogen values of fish with the human remains that we had from the site that we were working on to look at whether or not they were using eating a marine diet. So obviously that can be extremely valuable.
00:48:32
Speaker
And again, that helps with the way we understand migration, because obviously if you have remains of a person that's pretty landlocked, but you can see at some point they had a diet high in marine resources, you might be able to figure out, hey, maybe they moved. And that was actually the case in Machu Picchu. Yeah. And I guess it would probably be the case for myself when they'll eventually study me in a few hundred years time.
00:48:57
Speaker
as I come from a place that has a very high, like a very marine rich diet, and then I moved somewhere that's landlocked. There you go. Some things say this, and that is very much the case for Machu Picchu as well, because the isotopic analysis as
00:49:13
Speaker
shown that actually a lot of the inhabitants were migrants from elsewhere in Peru, likely from coastal regions. The isotopic analysis shown that many had diets that were previously very high in marine resources.
00:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, and then as they move to Machu Picchu, you can see where actually grains and food like corn were likely a much more prominent source of subsistence. And I believe that corn is very high in carbon. I vaguely remember this from my master's degree, but you can actually kind of map out certain types of food and where they would kind of score isotopically.
00:49:55
Speaker
And that obviously helps in kind of figuring out diet that way. Yeah, I think there's a whole map. So like you have a map of various sort of world regions and each sort of region have their own sort of values that you can confront it against. Yeah, so they're very previously a very high marine diet, which of course, you know, shifted then in Machu Picchu. And unsurprisingly, a lot of the fauna remains found at the site were actually Alpacas and Lamas.
00:50:24
Speaker
Yeah, you know, as we already talked about. But again, I figured it's a great time to talk about ritual, baby. Yes, as a zookeological analysis has also been used to examine ritualistic feast deposits from Machu Picchu, which may have been used as part of an ancestor feast, right, or used as part of ancestor worship, and may have included the offerings of both food and sacrifices. So like,
00:50:54
Speaker
Aside from your llamas and alpacas, some of the fauna remains include a dog, camellids, camellids, camellids. Which other two? How do you say camellids or camellids? I always say camellids, but it might be camellids. I don't know. Camellids, deer and guinea pigs.
00:51:12
Speaker
Please, please. Yeah, which are for people don't know guinea pigs were often eaten in these areas. Don't don't tell your kids. Yeah, maybe don't tell your kids, but it's very, very common. And yeah, so
00:51:28
Speaker
the dogs were often found on butchered, and thus they were probably the sacrifices. And then it probably implied that the offered feast would include llamas and alpacas and other camelids and deer and the guinea pigs. And like I said, they're all kind of noted to be part of the subsistence of the area. And it's also just interesting to think of Andean ancestor worship, which I didn't know was actually kind of a cultural part of that region.
00:51:57
Speaker
as um again because we were talking about you know how we have these similarities and cultures around the world. Chinese culture and still part of Chinese culture is obviously ancestor worship and kind of ancestor feasting. We're very big on anytime there's an ancestral kind of holiday like tomb sweeping day. You gotta go to your ancestors grave or
00:52:21
Speaker
tomb and you lay out a nice meal. I've never really done it, but I've kind of started doing it now because it feels right, but interesting. Yeah, I think similarly, we only have a Day of the Dead, November 2nd. We don't particularly celebrate per se, but it's very much that you'll go to the cemeteries or see your ancestors pay your respects. But I think there might be traditional foods in there, but I can't.
00:52:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we don't we don't sacrifice. No, no, no, no. Do sacrifice good food sometimes, but you do it for the ancestors. What can I say? But yeah, and I think that brings us to the end of the zoo archaeology of the Americas, which has been a very confusing journey as to maybe we should all get better naming conventions, huh, folks? Just putting it out there.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:53:18
Speaker
But as always, you know, you should tell your friends about the podcast.
00:53:25
Speaker
You should subscribe to our podcast, although I've only just realized that it's follow now on like iTunes. So follow and or subscribe to our podcast. Leave us a review. We are on Twitter at Archio animals. You can follow us and let us know what do you want us to talk about? We love taking listener requests. Obviously, we're doing this miniseries. But hey, after that, who knows what we're doing? Actually, we do know we're doing because we're very well organized, but you don't know. So.
00:53:57
Speaker
We can always take the time for a listener's request. Yes, we can. And hey, maybe if you go to the Archaeology Podcast Network and you become a member there, you might find some bonus apps or bonus material from us or all the other podcasts that are available on the network. So as always, I guess I'm Ben Alex with Patrick. And Simona Falanga. And yeah, we'll see you next time, folks. Bye. Bye.
00:54:21
Speaker
That's a surprise.
00:54:30
Speaker
Thank you for listening to RQ animals. Please subscribe and rate the podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. You can find us on Twitter at RQ animals. Also, the views expressed on the podcast are those of ourselves, the hosts and guests, and do not necessarily represent those of our institution, employers and the RQLG podcast network. Thanks for listening.
00:54:55
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.