Avian resources at a Mexican site at the time of the Spanish Conquest

✍ Scribed by Eduardo Corona M.

• Book ID: 101286868
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 212 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1047-482X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1212(199707/08)7:4<321::aid-oa383>3.0.co;2-e

✦ Synopsis

The time of the Spanish Conquest in America saw a major biological interchange caused by human action. In the native people it was expressed by major changes in the use of animals, due to the introduction of domestic European fauna. This theme is discussed here based on a review of ethnohistorical sources and a small body of recent archaeological evidence. An analysis is presented of the use of birds at a Mexican settlement inhabited in the sixteenth century at the time of Spanish contact. The bird remains, 456 fragments, are from the site of El Japo  n, southeast of Mexico City. The main avian resources were domestic fowl, Gallus gallus, turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, and four species of ducks. The exploitation of scrub jay, Apheolocoura coerulescens is recorded for the ®rst time in Mexican archaeo-ornithology. The study con®rms ethnohistorical information about the introduction of the domestic fowl, but also shows that native resources were more widely used than is known from the chronicles of the sixteenth century.