Faunal acquisition, maintenance, and consumption: how the Teotihuacanos got their meat
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Faunal acquisition, maintenance, and consumption: how the Teotihuacanos got their meat Nawa Sugiyama 1,2 & Raúl Valadez Azúa 3 & Bernardo Rodríguez Galicia 3
Received: 18 January 2016 / Accepted: 9 September 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016
Abstract The compilation of the last 40 years of zooarchaeological exploration at Teotihuacan, Mexico, provides a unique opportunity to create more nuanced models of New World vertebrate consumption that did not focus on domesticated animals (dog and turkey). Any single model of ancient food systems fails to represent how varied ecological and social contexts led to a complex web of adaptations, and here, it is argued that Teotihuacan’s arid, highland, and urban environment contributed to a distinct faunal acquisition strategy. Intra-site variation and diverse degrees of animal procurement and management were practiced throughout the site. For example, the low proportion of deer compared to the abundant evidence of rabbit/hare consumption suggests small-scale animal management and breeding programs in the residential
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s12520-016-0387-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Nawa Sugiyama [email protected]; [email protected] Raúl Valadez Azúa [email protected] Bernardo Rodríguez Galicia [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason University, Robinson Hall B, Room 305, MSN 3G5, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444, USA
2
Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, MRC 112, Washington, DC 20560, USA
3
Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional de Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior, Ciudad Universitaria, 04510 Coyoacán, D.F, Mexico
complexes supplemented with opportunistic garden hunting and meat purchased through a market economy. Such foodstuffs would have been both more predictable and readily made available to organize large feasting events, a possibility that is strengthened by evidence of extraordinarily high abundances of rabbits in ceremonial contexts. Keywords Zooarchaeology . Teotihuacan . Vertebrate consumption . Foodways . Animal management
New World animal consumption Compared to the emphasis on diverse floral resources that drastically influenced Old World economies after the Spanish conquest (e.g., Crosby 1972), relatively few studies have addressed the dynamic nature of animal consumption strategies in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica (see however Valadez Azúa 2003). This is mainly because the limited number of domesticated animals, the dog (Canis familiaris) and the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), had a relatively small impact on European foodways in contrast to Old World livestock. In Teotihuacan, we found that these two domesticated animals only accounted for 17 % of the total faunal assemblage. Very little has been mentioned about other forms of animal management in urban settings in the New World. Utilizing direct archeolog
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