In the US Southwest and Northwest Mexico, people and turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) have had a reciprocal relationship for millennia; turkeys supplied feathers, meat, and other resources, whereas people provided food, shelter, and care. To investigate how turkeys fit within subsistence, economic production, sociopolitical organization, and religious and ritual practice in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico, we report on genetic (mtDNA) and stable isotope (δ13C, δ15N) data from turkeys recovered from Mimbres Classic period (AD 1000–1130) sites. Results indicate that Mimbres aviculturists had haplogroup H1 and H2 turkeys, and most ate maize-based diets similar to humans, but some ate nonmaize and mixed diets. We contextualize these data to other turkey studies from the northern Southwest and discuss how the human-turkey relationship began, the evidence for pens and restricting turkey movement, and the socioecological factors related to turkey management during the Classic period, particularly the challenges associated with providing maize to turkeys during times of environmental stress. This study has broad relevance to places where people managed wild, tame, and domestic animals, and we offer new insights into how prehispanic, small-scale, middle-range agricultural societies managed turkeys for ritual and utilitarian purposes.

In a recent issue of American Antiquity, two articles (Gill et al. 2021; Lyons et al. 2021) perpetuate the common misconception that dietary carbohydrates are an essential component of the human diet and that plants—the main source of dietary carbohydrates—must be consumed to promote health. In fact, carbohydrate is a nonessential macronutrient with adequate amounts of energy—the sole function of carbohydrates in the human diet—being produced via gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis in the absence of dietary carbohydrate. Additionally, both articles erroneously employ the term “dietary staple” in reference to geophyte consumption.

People living in Mesoamerica and what is now the eastern and southwestern United States used turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) as sources of meat, eggs, bones, and feathers. Turkey husbandry and domestication are confirmed in two of these regions (Mesoamerica and the American Southwest), but human-turkey interactions in Eastern North American (eastern United States and Canada) are not fully explored. We apply stable isotope (δ13C, δ15N) and ancient mitochondrial DNA analyses to archaeofaunal samples from seven sites in the southeastern United States to test whether turkeys were managed or captively reared. These combined data do not support prolonged or intensive captive rearing of turkeys, and evidence for less intensive management is ambiguous. More research is warranted to determine whether people managed turkeys in these areas, and whether this is generalizable. Determining whether turkeys were managed or reared in the southeastern United States helps define cultural and environmental factors related to turkey management or husbandry throughout North America. This inquiry contributes to discussion of the roles of intensified human-animal interactions in animal domestication.

Camelid pastoralism, agriculture, sedentism, surplus production, increasing cultural complexity, and interregional interaction during northern Chile's Late Formative period (AD 100–400) are seen in the flow of goods and people over expanses of desert. Consolidating evidence of material culture from these interactions with a bioarchaeological dimension allows us to provide details about individual lives and patterns in the Late Formative more generally. Here, we integrate a variety of skeletal, chemical, and archaeological data to explore the life and death of a small child (Calate-3N.7). By taking a multiscalar approach, we present a narrative that considers not only the varied materiality that accompanies this child but also what the child's life experience was and how this reflects and shapes our understanding of the Late Formative period in northern Chile. This evidence hints at the profound mobility of their youth. The complex mortuary context reflects numerous interactions and long-distance relationships. Ultimately, the evidence speaks to deep social relations between two coastal groups, the Atacameños and Tarapaqueños. Considering this suite of data, we can see a child whose life was spent moving through desert routes and perhaps also glimpse the construction of intercultural identity in the Formative period.

We present stable isotope and osteological data from human remains at Paloma, Chilca I, La Yerba III, and Morro I that offer new evidence for diet, lifestyle, and habitual mobility in the first villages that proliferated along the arid Pacific coast of South America (ca. 6000 cal BP). The data not only reaffirm the dietary primacy of marine protein for this period but also show evidence at Paloma of direct access interactions between the coast and highlands, as well as habitual mobility in some parts of society. By locating themselves at the confluence of diverse coastal and terrestrial habitats, the inhabitants of these early villages were able to broaden their use of resources through rounds of seasonal mobility, while simultaneously increasing residential sedentism. Yet they paid little substantial health penalty for their settled lifestyles, as reflected in their osteological markers of stature and stress, compared with their agriculturalist successors even up to five millennia later. Contrasting data for the north coast of Chile indicate locally contingent differences. Considering these data in a wider chronological context contributes to understanding how increasing sedentism and population density laid the foundations here for the emergence of Late Preceramic social complexity.

This article discusses the composition of prehispanic diets based on the isotopic composition (δ13C, δ15N) of 10 human samples dated between 3600 and 1300 BP from the Cajón Valley in Northwest Argentina. The sample is the only one available for the time and region considered and covers a 2,300-year range. It shows long-term tendencies in the consumption of food resources during a time when people were experimenting with and eventually domesticating plants and animals in the high-altitude Southern Calchaquíes valleys. Results indicate that animals contributed more to the diet than was expected and plants correspondingly less than expected. This proportion was maintained even during the human occupations associated with the agropastoral villages of Cardonal and Bordo Marcial (ca. 2000 BP) when a greater contribution of plant resources—in particular maize—would be expected. This new evidence demonstrates the diversity of productive strategies used by the societies of Northwest Argentina at the beginning of the Formative period. A variety of resources contributed to daily food intake, minimizing the importance of maize in the diet.