Cultural and Genetic Contexts for Early Turkey Domestication in the Northern Southwest

Abstract

The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) was independently domesticated in Mesoamerica and the Southwest, the latter as the only case of Native American animal domestication north of Mexico. In the upland (non-desert) portion of the American Southwest, distinctive closely related mtDNA lineages belonging to haplogroup H1 (thought to indicate domestication) occur from ca. 1 A.D. (Basketmaker II period) through early historic times. At many sites, low frequencies of lineages belonging to haplogroup H2 also occur, apparently derived from the local Merriam’s subspecies. We report genetic, stable isotope, and coprolite data from turkey remains recovered at three early sites in SE Utah and SW Colorado dating to the Basketmaker II, III, and early Pueblo II periods. Evidence from these and other early sites indicates that both the H1 and H2 turkeys had a predominantly maize-based diet similar to that of humans; prior to late Pueblo II times, the birds were kept primarily to provide feathers for blankets and ritual uses; and ritualized burials indicate turkeys’ symbolic value. We argue that viewing individuals from the H1 and H2 haplogroups as “domestic” versus “wild” is an oversimplification.

The earliest farmers of northwest China exploited grain-fed pheasants not chickens

“…2). This accords well with isotopic differences across the wild-domestic feeding spectrum, for example among modern wild-foraging and pen-raised Phasianus 17 , as well as between ancient domestic turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) and contemporary wild turkeys from the American southwest 18 . As with many of the pigs and some of the dogs from Dadiwan, the stable isotope values from the bird bone found at the same site suggest that those birds exploited a mixed-bag of resources, including those they could forage on their own (as if they did not live in the human biome) and those they could only acquire through a life in proximity to human millet cultivators.…”

Genomic estimation of complex traits reveals ancient maize adaptation to temperate North America

“…Turkey Pen Shelter (TPS) is a dry-cave shelter on the edge of Grand Gulch in temperate southeast Utah (40 km from and at a similar elevation, 1830 m, to Blanding weather stations); it has evidence for established agriculture and was occupied 1800 to 2000 years ago during agricultural intensification in the uplands (16,18). We assessed the degree of temperate adaptation in early maize agriculture by predicting days to flowering on the basis of the genotypes of archaeological TPS maize from a modern inbred panel representing a global collection of 2648 inbred lines held in Ames, Iowa [henceforth Ames Inbred Diversity (AID) panel].…”

Ancient Maya turkey husbandry: Testing theories through stable isotope analysis

“…To better understand how managed or domesticated resources were integrated into ancient Maya subsistence, ritual and political economies, we must first understand the process and extent of Maya turkey husbandry and domestication. The subject is only recently gaining traction in Mesoamerica and the Maya world (Thornton et al 2012;Thornton and Emery, 2015;Lapham et al, this volume;Manin, Cornette and Lefèvre, this volume;Martinez Lira and Valadez, this volume) despite broad interest in the domestic dog in Mesoamerica (Blanco et al 2006;Götz 2008;Valadez Azúa et al 2006, 2013, and the domestic turkey in the American Southwest (e.g., Badenhorst et al 2012;Grimstead et al 2014;Lipe et al 2016;McCaffery et al 2014;McKusick 2001;Munro 2006Munro , 2011Newbold et al 2012;Rawlings and Driver 2010;Speller et al 2010). In Mesoamerica, where the timing of domestication and the possible trade of turkeys are unclear, the lack of osteological markers distinguishing domesticated from wild birds is significantly problematic.…”