Wild Turkey
In a comment to the previous post, Alan Reed Bishop brings up an issue closely related to the recent evidence for early maize cultivation in Chaco Canyon: the introduction of domesticated turkeys to the Southwest. A recent study of archaeological turkey remains found that the majority of the turkeys found in Southwestern archaeological sites are genetically distinct from both the local subspecies of wild turkey and the subspecies found in Mexico that was domesticated there and is ancestral to the modern domestic turkey. Instead, the Southwestern domestic turkeys were closest genetically to two subspecies of wild turkey found to the east and southeast, in the southern Plains and the eastern US. This strongly implies that turkeys were domesticated somewhere to the east and then introduced to the Southwest as domestic animals, presumably through long-distance trade contacts.
The earliest remains used in that study were coprolites from Turkey Pen Cave in Grand Gulch, Utah, and date to the Basketmaker II period. Some of these coprolites were also directly dated by AMS; the earliest had a 95% confidence interval of AD 20 to 200. Like the bones from other sites analyzed in the same study, the Turkey Pen Cave coprolites indicated that most of the turkeys kept there belonged to the domesticated lineage, apparently non-local, that showed strong similarities to wild subspecies further east. In addition, an earlier study of Basketmaker II subsistence in the Cedar Mesa/Grand Gulch area, using a variety of lines of evidence including coprolites, found that corn agriculture was already as central to the Basketmaker II subsistence system as it would be in later Pueblo times. The presence of domesticated turkeys as well as corn agriculture as well-established aspects of Basketmaker II society seems to imply that both were introduced earlier, perhaps in the Archaic period, and the accumulating evidence for Archaic maize throughout the Southwest supports this supposition. Less study has been done of turkeys, however, and while the DNA study refers to alleged Archaic turkey remains from the Southwest, the references are to obscure sources that I have not been able to track down.
Regardless of when domesticated turkeys were first introduced to the Southwest, they presumably were not introduced along with maize. Turkeys seem to have been introduced from the east, while maize definitely came from the south. It is possible that both came from northeastern Mexico, where one of the wild turkey subspecies similar to the Southwestern type is found, but there is basically no evidence for direct contact between that area and the Southwest, and the earliest evidence for maize there apparently dates to approximately the same period as the earliest Southwestern maize, suggesting that agriculture was not introduced to this area early enough to make it the vector for transmission to the Southwest. It is much more likely that maize was introduced through western and/or northern Mexico, areas with extensive evidence for contact with the Southwest throughout prehistory. So it seems quite clear that the introduction of turkeys and corn were separate events, but it seems equally clear that both were in fact introduced from elsewhere, probably during the Late Archaic, and it is striking that they seem to be present together from quite early on, at least on the Colorado Plateau. (Turkeys are conspicuously absent from early agricultural sites in southern Arizona, which is another piece of evidence suggesting that they were not introduced from the south.) I’m not really sure what the upshot of all this is, but it’s certainly interesting stuff.
Matson, R., & Chisholm, B. (1991). Basketmaker II Subsistence: Carbon Isotopes and Other Dietary Indicators from Cedar Mesa, Utah American Antiquity, 56 (3) DOI: 10.2307/280894
Speller, C., Kemp, B., Wyatt, S., Monroe, C., Lipe, W., Arndt, U., & Yang, D. (2010). Ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis reveals complexity of indigenous North American turkey domestication Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107 (7), 2807-2812 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0909724107
Perhaps the maize brought with it the security and surplus that allowed for much more distant trading forays.
Or the successful adaptation to farming may have inspired an increased openness to change that made people of the southwest take advantage of a turkey resource that they had had access to through existing trade connections, but an unwillingness to adopt previously.
Most all of the references I have run across or heard talk of (always a reliable source!), speak of turkeys kept as providers of feathers but not meat. There is also some evidence of remains, I understand, that might indicate a ‘pet’ or favored animal. Is this consistent with what you know of the use of turkeys in the 200-1300 AD period in Anasazi areas?
Andrew: Both plausible ideas, although it’s interesting that the adoption of maize doesn’t seem to have led to much immediate social change. The types of change usually associated with incipient agriculture don’t seem to have come until considerably later, during Basketmaker II. It would be very useful to know when exactly during this process turkeys enter the picture.
Cyndy: I’ve heard that too, about the feathers, and it makes sense given the use of other birds for feathers and the general lack of evidence for consumption of turkeys in earlier sites, but some of the turkey articles seem to suggest that they were being eaten in at least some areas as early as Basketmaker II. Not sure what sort of remains are being interpreted as suggesting pet turkeys, but there are some examples at Chaco of formal turkey burials.
Thanks for shining some light on this particular issue. My guess is that there is some combination of sustainable corn cultivation allowing for a certain amount of animal agriculture due to the bit of leisure time provided by growing your own food instead of hunting/gathering what may or may not be available in any particular region. The raising of turkeys was certainly introduced later than corn cultivation, if for nothing else but by necessity. Most information which I have read suggests that the early use of turkeys was for feathers (which is still true of many Native American tribes today who buy feathers of standard turkeys as stand in for those of birds of prey) I have also read that much of the turkey husbandry in the early period was chocked up to a reverence for or semi-worship of the turkey. I’m sure though that when things were tough, even in the early days , it was fairly common to eat the turkeys, we are afterall talking about a subsistence culture.
The Anasazi/Pueblo turkeys continued to be cultured into the 1860′s before dying out. Most probably relic populations of mixed genetic stock could be found among the Merriams populations of the southwest.
My guess is that the influence and knowledge of turkey husbandry made its way to the southwest via mexico which has a long history of turkey domestication, that said the genepool results of the paper cited above definitely make it clear that known examples of the Anasazi turkeys didn’t come from Mexico but instead from some overlaping territory of the Rio Grande and Eastern Subspecies, or some long lost subspecies intermediate of the two, either occuring naturally or having been bred by another Native American tribe. I do find it convinient that the Cherokee gave vast symbological importance to the cherokee in the South East, perhaps somewhere yet there is proof to be found of their ancestors having cultured turkeys in that region with proof of their movement/trade of the animals into the south west.
If however their animal breeding program resembled the same set of ideals as their horticultural breeding program, the genome of their turkeys may be even more diverse than we realize. For example, seed of many types of corn, beans, sunflowers, and sqaush (later melons and other Old World crops) were often mixed together in an adhoc way which provided them with a wide base of genetics from which to pull and select only those genotypes/phenotypes that fit their cultural/environmental conditions and allowed for horizontal resistances to develop and created a wide diversity within varieties/landraces. I would imagine this is probably true of their turkey breeding program as well but will be hard to prove with so few individual specimens having been tested.
I imagine in time we will come to see that they used all available resources from the South Mexican, Eastern, Rio Grande, and Merriams.
There seems to be some ambiguous information out there about when exactly turkeys began to be eaten rather than used primarily for feathers. Matson and Chisholm say that there is evidence of turkeys being eaten in the Cedar Mesa area as early as Basketmaker III, which seems to imply that Basketmaker II sites such as Turkey Pen Cave don’t show evidence of consumption of turkeys, but they rather frustratingly neither go into more detail nor give any references for that statement. Most other literature on Anasazi turkeys either implies or straight-out states that they were mostly or exclusively used for feathers until Pueblo III or so, but again with little explicit support. Alan is probably right that they would have been eaten at least in difficult times even if they weren’t raised primarily for meat, but it would be nice to find some direct evidence showing the earliest consumption of turkeys.
As for domestication, I think the next step has to be a similar genetic analysis of archaeological turkey remains found further east. I don’t know enough about that area to know how frequently turkey remains are found there or in what contexts, but surely there must be some, even given the much more difficult preservation conditions than in the Southwest. The early maize evidence from the Southwest definitely seems to imply the use of several varieties which may have been introduced at different times from different directions, and it’s quite possible something similar was going on with the turkeys too.
Thanks to you both for your followup on turkey edibility!