Turkey domestication and provisioning in the Mesa Verde Region (US Southwest), Pueblo I to Pueblo III (725-1280 CE): C, Sr, and O isotope analyses

From the Pueblo I to the Late Pueblo III periods (725-1280 CE), in the Mesa Verde and McElmo Dome regions of the American Southwest, turkey use continuously increased, then declined during the final period of widespread residential occupation in the region. Increasing aridity in the Late PIII period may have limited agricultural productivity, and consequently, the ability to provision turkeys. In this paper, we use C, Sr, and O isotope analyses of turkey bone (n = 95) from archaeological contexts to investigate whether the turkey diets and the locations where they were raised changed over time as a consequence of demographic and social changes in the region. Our results show that almost all turkeys were raised by Puebloan maize farmers in or in the vicinity of the McElmo Dome region and fed a C4-based diet, presumably dominated by maize, during the whole period under study. However, it seems that they were fed less maize during the late thirteenth century. Perhaps facing lower yield harvests, maize was prioritized for human consumption, which resulted in less intensified turkey production efforts and reduced investment in maize-provisioned flocks. Our results also attest to the occasional use of local (likely wild) turkeys not provisioned with maize, and one wild turkey brought in from a more distant area.