A team of archaeologists excavating the Mitla Fortress, a Zapotec site in Oaxaca, Mexico, dating to the Classic to Early Postclassic period (300-1200 CE), has uncovered the remains of juvenile and adult turkeys, whole eggs, and numerous eggshell fragments in domestic refuse and ritual offering contexts. They say this is the clearest and most comprehensive evidence so far for turkey domestication in Oaxaca.
Female wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) with young, from Birds of America by John James Audubon.
“Our research tells us that wild turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) had been domesticated by 400-500 CE,” said team member Dr. Gary Feinman, an archaeologist and the MacArthur curator of Mesoamerican, Central American, and East Asian anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
The team’s results were published online recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
“We present multiple lines of evidence that turkeys were intensively raised and bred for meat and other by-products and for ritual use in the Valley of Oaxaca at least as early as the middle of the Classic period (400-600 CE),” the authors said.
“In the zooarchaeological assemblage from the Mitla Fortress we have identified an unusually high proportion of turkey skeletal remains from juvenile and adult birds (both hens and toms) along with whole eggs and numerous eggshell fragments.”
“Both unhatched and hatched eggs are present, and they represent a range of incubation stages from unfertilized or newly fertilized eggs to partially developed eggs to hatched poults.”
Dr. Feinman added: “it was very exciting because it’s very rare to find a whole cluster of intact eggs. This was very unexpected.”
Skeletal elements from the turkey poults and the largest pieces of the unhatched eggs from the Mitla Fortress. Left: eggshell. Right (top to bottom): mandibles, coracoids, humeri, femora, tibiotarsi, and tarsometatarsi. Image credit: Heather A. Lapham et al.
Scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis of the eggshells confirmed that they were indeed laid by turkeys.
“The fact that we see a full clutch of unhatched turkey eggs, along with other juvenile and adult turkey bones nearby, tells us that these birds were domesticated,” Dr. Feinman said.
“It helps to confirm historical information about the use of turkeys in the area.”
“The eggs were an offering of ritual significance to the Zapotec people,” he added.
The Zapotec people still live in Oaxaca today, and domesticated turkeys remain important to them.
“Turkeys are raised to eat, given as gifts, and used in rituals,” Dr. Feinman said.
The new information about when turkeys were domesticated helps amplify the bigger picture of animal domestication in Mesoamerica.
“There were very few domesticated animals in Oaxaca and Mesoamerica in general compared with Eurasia,” Dr. Feinman said.
“Eurasia had lots of different meat sources, but in Oaxaca 1,500 years ago, the only assuredly domestic meat sources were turkeys and dogs.”
“And while people in Oaxaca today rely largely on meat from animals brought over by the Spanish (like chicken, beef, and pork), turkeys have much greater antiquity in the region and still have great ritual as well as economic significance today.”
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Heather A. Lapham et al. Turkey husbandry and use in Oaxaca, Mexico: A contextual study of turkey remains and SEM analysis of eggshell from the Mitla Fortress. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, published online July 1, 2016; doi: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.05.058
