Thesis
Is a bird in hand really worth two in the bush?: models of turkey domestication on the Colorado Plateau
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2011
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/102624
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore the relationships between turkeys and humans in the Pueblo Southwest as a means of understanding how human agency directs the process of domestication. The models presented here define potential decisions made by human agents during the process of domestication, and describe how we might expect these decisions to pattern the archaeological record of domestication. I begin by describing the genetic and demographic implications of turkey domestication for turkey flocks, noting that variations in the treatment of turkey—feeding, breeding, and use—should generate distinguishable archaeogenetic signatures. In the second part, I imagine the adoption of turkey domestication as a resilience trap—the ‘Avicultural Trap’—making the Pueblo subsistence system increasingly rigid and narrow while simultaneously allowing explosive population growth. I describe how a feedback loop between turkey, maize yields, and human population growth amplified to the point where the Pueblo subsistence system was unable to respond to climate-induced reduction in agricultural yield. In the final section, I focus on ‘domestication’ as food production and incorporate domestication into the patch-choice model from classic optimal foraging theory. I implement that model in the Village simulation, and generate further expectations of the spread of the adoption of domestication. These include the prediction that domestication likely spread outwards from the most agriculturally productive areas of the landscape, and may have been less enthusiastically embraced in areas with other available high-quality protein resources.
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Details
- Title
- Is a bird in hand really worth two in the bush?
- Creators
- Ronald Kyle Bocinsky
- Contributors
- Timothy A. Kohler (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525186501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis