Reduced Population Variance in Strontium Isotope Ratios Informs Domesticated Turkey Use at Chaco Canyon,New Mexico,USA

Traditionally, strontium isotopes (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) have been used as a sourcing tool in numerous archaeological artifact classes. The research presented here demonstrates that ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr_bioapatite ratios also can be used at a population level to investigate the presence of domesticated animals and methods of management. The proposed methodology combines ecology, isotope geochemistry, and behavioral ecology to assess the presence and nature of turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) domestication. This case study utilizes ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr_bioapatite ratios from teeth and bones of archaeological turkey, deer (Odocoileus sp.), lagomorph (Lepus sp. and Sylvilagus sp.), and prairie dog (Cynomys sp.) from Chaco Canyon, NM, USA (ca. A.D. 800–1250). Wild deer and turkey from the southwestern USA have much larger home ranges and dispersal behaviors (measured in kilometers) when compared to lagomorphs and prairie dogs (measured in meters). Hunted deer and wild turkey from archaeological contexts at Chaco Canyon are expected to have a higher variance in their ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr_bioapatite ratios, when compared to small range taxa (lagomorphs and prairie dogs). Contrary to this expectation, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr_bioapatite values of turkey bones from Chacoan assemblages have a much lower variance than deer and are similar to that of smaller mammals. The sampled turkey values show variability most similar to lagomorphs and prairie dogs, suggesting the turkeys from Chaco Canyon were consuming a uniform diet and/or were constrained within a limited home range, indicating at least proto-domestication. The population approach has wide applicability for evaluating the presence and nature of domestication when combined with paleoecology and behavioral ecology in a variety of animals and environments.     

Further aspects of fur trade life depicted in the skeleton

Osteobiographies were reconstructed from the skeletal remains of four adults from Fort Edmonton, a 19th century trading post of the Canadian fur trade. Three males were Caucasoid and probably ethnic Scots, given the usual origin of fur traders in this region. The lone adult female in the sample was Mongoloid, either Indian or Métis, and likely the ‘country wife’ of a fur trader, since she was buried in the European tradition in the fort cemetery. The cause of death is not discernible from any of the skeletal remains and none of these individuals exhibit any evidence of chronic infectious disease, malnutrition or neoplasia. Trauma, arthritis and other indicators of physical stress do appear, however, and present an opportunity to expand our understanding of the effects of fur trade life on the skeleton. Viewed in the context of historical accounts of life at the fort in the early 19th century, stress markers on the skeletons of three males have led to the conclusion that they were voyageurs who engaged in trading trips by canoe or boat. Lesions of the capsule attachment area at the proximal tibio‐fibular articulation appear unilaterally in two males and may be associated with ‘mushing’ or driving a dog sled in winter. The musculoskeletal lesions on the one preserved female skeleton are consistent with the arduous domestic activities documented at the fort, which include milking cows, churning butter, stirring lye soap, and harvesting grain and root vegetables by hand. Since specific occupations or behaviours cannot be precisely determined from muscular attachment and other stress markers, these interpretations are made cautiously and only in the culture‐historical context of the skeletal sample. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Book reviews

Etudes hégéliennes: Raison et décision. Bernard Bourgeois (Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, Questions, 1992). 404 pp. FF 198.00 paper.

Name, Hero, Icon: Semiotics of Nationalism through Heroic Biography. Anna Makolkin (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1992), 264 pp. DM 148 cloth.

A History of Women in the West: II. Silences of the Middle Ages. Edited by Christiane Klapisch‐Zuber (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).

Examination of Pharisaic Traditions. Exame das tradiçoes phariseas. By Uriel Da Costa. Facsimile of the only copy, Royal Library of Copenhagen. Supplement by Samuel Da Suva's Treatise on the immortality of the soul. Tratado da immortalidades da alma. Trans., notes and introduction by H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon (E. J. Brill: Leiden, New York, Köln, 1992) 578 pp. $143.00 cloth.

La transparence du mal: Essai sur les phénomènes extrêmes. By Jean Baudrillard (Paris: Galilée, 1990) 180 pp. (English translation: The Transparency of Evil: Essay on Extreme Phenomena [New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 1992] 200 pp.)

Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France. (Women in Culture and Society). By Penelope D. Johnson (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994) pp. xv, 294, £11.95/ $17.25 paper in the U.K. and Eire.

Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries. Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Gustav Henningsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 447 pp. m.p.g. paper.

Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn's Philosophy of Science, Paul Hoy‐ningen‐Huene, translated by Alexander T. Levin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) 310 + xx pp. $40.00 cloth $15.95 paper.

Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth‐Century French Thought. By Martin Jay (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) xi + 632 pp. $35.00 cloth $16.00 paper.

Nietzsche and the Origin of Virtue. By Lester H. Hunt (London/New York, 1991) xxiii + 200 pp. £12.99 paper.

Empire, Welfare State, Europe: English History, 1906–1992 (Short Oxford History of the Modern World), 4th ed. By T. O. Lloyd (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1993) 587 pp. paper.

Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894–1917. By Anna Geifman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) xii + 376 pp. $39.50 £32.50 cloth.

Thucydides, Hobbes and the Interpretation of Realism. By Laurie M. Johnson (DeKalb, Ill: Northern Illinois University Press, 1993). xiv + 214 pp. $32.00 cloth.

Homo Aestheticus: The Invention of Taste in the Democratic Age. By Luc Ferry, trans. by Robert de Loazia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) viii + 276 pp.

Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz: The Concept of Substance in Seventeenth Century Metaphysics. By R. S. Woolhouse (London and New York: Rout‐ledge, 1993) 214 pp., £10.00 paper.

Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. By John Tolan (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993) xv + 288 pp. £31.50 cloth £15.50 paper.

To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American Literature. By Eric J. Sundquist (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1993) pp. ix + 705.

Speculative Freemasonry and the Enlightenment: A Study of the Craft in London, Paris, Prague, and Vienna. By R. William Weisberger (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1993) vii + 244 pp. $52.00 cloth.

Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936. By S. G. Payne (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 470 pp. £53.95 cloth £17.95 paper.

Women and Medicine in the French Enlightenment. The Debate over Maladies des Femmes. By Lindsay Wilson (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993) vii + 246 pp. cloth, n.p.g.

Pragmatism and Social Theory. By Hans Joas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) 272 pp. $45.00 cloth $16.95 paper.

Karl Kautsky: Marxism, Revolution & Democracy. By John H. Kautsky (New Brunswick, N.J., and London: Transaction Books, 1994) 256 pp. $32.95/£24.95 ISBN 1–56000–109–7.

The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes. By Mark Hulliung (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 293 pp. $45.00 cloth.

What is Property? By Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, edited by Donald R. Kelley and Bonnie G. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xxxviii + 225 pp. $49.95 cloth $16.95 paper.

Sophocles, 2 vols. Trans, and edited by Hugh Lloyd‐Jones, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1994) vii + 486 pp. and viii + 599 pp. $16.95 per volume, cloth.

The Death of the Child Valerio Marcello. By Margaret L King (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) xviii + 484 pp. $22.95 paper $74.75 cloth.

Men Writing the Feminine: Literature, Theory and the Question of Genders. Edited by Thaïs E. Morgan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) vi + 207 pp. $16.95 cloth.

Stone. By John Sallis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994) 147 pp. $24.95 cloth $11.95 paper.

The Humanity of Thucydides. By Clifford Orwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) x + 235 pp. n.p.g.

Bruno Kreisky: Chancellor of Austria. A Political Biography. By H. Pierre Secher (Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1994) vii + 223 pp. $17.85 cloth.

Visions of America since 1492. Edited by Deborah L. Madsen (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994) xv + 164 pp. $39.95 cloth.

Flying Out of This World. By Peter Greenaway (The Parti‐Pris Series) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) vi + 199 pp. £31.95/$45.95 paper £59.95/$86.25 cloth.

Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought. By Louis A. Sass (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) x + 595 pp. n.p.g., paper.

Englishness and the Study of Politics: The Social and Political Thought of Ernest Barker. By Julia Stapleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 249 pp. £35.00/$59.95 ISBN 0–521–46125–1.

Marguerite Duras: Apocalyptic Desires. By Leslie Hill (Routledge, 1994) viii + 200 pp. £11.99 paper.

The Rhetorical Voice of Psychoanalysis: Displacement of Evidence by Theory. By Donald P. Spence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) 228 pp. $29.95 cloth.

Nietzsche, God, and the Jews. By Weaver Santaniello (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994) 232 pp. $17.95 cloth.

Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. By Rodolphe Gasche (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) vii + 286 pp. $45.00 cloth $22.95 paper.

Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev, and the Mirage of Democracy. By Jonathan Steele (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) xviii + 427 pp. $27.95 cloth.

Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture. By John Gascoigne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) 324 pp. £35, $59.95.

National Cultures and European Integration: Explorative Essays on Cultural Diversity and Common Policies. Edited by Staffan Zetterholm (Oxford/Providence USA and Berg, 1994) vii + 175 pp. £24.95 cloth £12.95 paper.

English Mystics of the Middle Ages. Edited by Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xi +311 pp. £37.50, $59.95 cloth.

Schumann and His World. Edited by R. Larry Todd (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) xi + 396 pp. n.p.g.

English Traits: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume 5, Historical introduction by Philip Nicolof, notes by Robert E. Burkholder, text established and textual introduction and apparatus by Douglas Emery Wilson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) lxxiii + 433 pp. $65.00.

To Destroy Painting. By Louis Marin, trans. by Mette Hjort (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995) $49.95 cloth, $18.25 paper.

Italian Fascism, 1919–1945. By Philip Morgan (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) xii + 209 pp. $45.00.

Leaders and Masses in the Roman World: Studies in Honour of Zvi Yavetz. Edited by I. Malkin and Z. W. Rubinsohn (Leiden, New York, and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1995) xviii + 243 pp. 110.00/ $63.00 cloth.

From Newton's Sleep. By Joseph Vining (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995) xvii + 398 pp. cloth.

A Requiem for Karl Marx. By Frank E. Manuel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995) xi + 255 pp. ISBN 0–674–76326–2, $24.95 cloth.

The Romans. Edited by Andrea Giardina, trans. by Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) pp. x + 393 $15.95 paper.