Past Events: 2008

November_Poster.pdf

As one of the few New World animal domesticates, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) represented an important resource for the Ancestral Pueblo of the Southwest United States. Despite the rich history of Southwest archaeology, several questions concerning the domestication and use of turkey remain unanswered, including the geographic origin of turkey domestication, the subspecies that were exploited, and the process by which turkey stocks were bred and traded within the region. This study applied ancient DNA analysis to nearly 200 archaeological turkey remains to investigate the distribution of turkey subspecies and domestic stocks within the Southwest. The results of this study are presented.

ASBC_Lecture_Poster_May_2008.pdf

In the early mid 1990s, coastal habitat surveys of the British Columbia coast, specifically the Broughton Archipelago, revealed hundreds of stone-wall features in the lower intertidal zone. The origin of these shore-parallel features could not be explained by natural processes, and archaeological literature was no help in identifying the features. John Harper’s talk chronicles the search for these features’ origin, the eventual identification or their origins – clam gardens – and collaboration with Kwakwaka’wakw elders, who worked on the clam gardens and who knew the Kwakwala names and songs about clam gardens. This talk provides a first-hand account of the storyline of the National Geographic movie: Ancient Sea Gardens, Mystery of the Pacific Northwest. Clam gardens have now been identified from Sitka, Alaska to Saanich Inlet in BC.