Hallo Heather,
I discussed turkey flock sizes in my dissertation:
Badenhorst, S. 2008. The zooarchaeology of great house sites in the San Juan
Basin of the American Southwest. Burnaby: Simon Fraser University.
However, ‘modeling’ turkey flock sizes is perhaps different from that of
livestock herd/flock sizes. For turkeys, isotope analysis (Rawlings, PhD
dissertation, 2006, Simon Fraser University) suggests that turkeys were
raised almost exclusively on maize. Of course, the issue is complex, as
turkeys could have been fed food scraps, left-overs, etc. The question here
I tried to answer is since we find so many turkey bones (relative to other
animals), how sustainable was raising turkeys in this arid region? I
concluded that flocks may not have been very large, using admittedly crude
estimates. I didn’t raise the issue of inbreeding in this case.
I may just add that in the case of cattle and sheep herd/flock sizes in
southern Africa, that its part of a long-standing debate on the spread of
Iron Age farmers and Late Stone Age pastoralists. In this case, some
archaeologists suggested that they had to keep at least 100 individuals to
have had sustainable herds/flocks. Of course, I disagree, arguing that herds
and flocks can in fact be much smaller than 100 individuals, as others also
suggested on this list. Here I was referring to total herd/flock sizes.
All best,
Shaw
Dr. Shaw Badenhorst
Department of Archaeozoology
Transvaal Museum
PO Box 413
Pretoria
0001
South Africa
On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:17:52 -0600 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Dear Shaw-
>
> Did you publish any of your results on your work with flock size,
> inbreeding, and domestic turkeys in the American Southwest? I'm
> interested in similar information as it might apply to rabbits.
>
> Heather
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Heather A. Lapham, Ph.D.
> Associate Scientist (Curator), Center for Archaeological Investigations
> Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology
> Faner 3479 - Mail Code 4527
> Southern Illinois University Carbondale
> 1000 Faner Drive
> Carbondale, Illinois 62901
>
> Office: (618) 453-5033
> Lab: (618) 453-2036
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Web: http://www.siu.edu/~cai
>
> At 12:40 PM 11/10/2008, Shaw Badenhorst wrote:
> >Dear Jaccqui,
> >
> >I have tried to address minimum herd sizes of cattle (and caprines) in
> >southern Africa.
> >
> >According to Schapera (1962:23), at least 10 head of cattle is said to be
> >the minimum size of a herd to yield an annual disposable surplus. He
> worked
> >on Tswana farmers in South Africa and Botswana.
> >
> >I concur. I have also seen that farmers in rural South Africa
> actually keep
> >only a few heads of cattle, sheep and goats, although I don't have
> any data
> >available on this (it would be an interesting project to get some actual
> >numbers….). Many papers also point out that farmers and pastoralists only
> >need a few animals to yield a surplus.
> >
> >A potential issue with small herds/flocks would be inbreeding. However,
> >there would be two ways to get around this problem. First, there are
> >different forms of inbreeding, and a farmer can manage it very
effectively
> >within a small herd or flock by choosing different strategies or forms of
> >inbreeding. There is a large literature on the different forms of
> inbreeding
> >in domestic animals.
> >
> >Second, although inbreeding causes various defects over a few
> generations in
> >domestic animals, the simplest way to get rid of these would be to
> introduce
> >new, unrelated individuals (through exchange, raiding, bridewealth
> payments,
> >etc).
> >
> >Herd and flock sizes can be modeled, as Dahl and Hjort attempted for
> cattle.
> >I recently tried to do it for domestic turkeys in the American Southwest.
> >Also see the Newman paper below for sheep.
> >
> >A few useful references on small cattle and caprine herd sizes (mostly
> >summarised in my own paper, which I will send you a PDF separately):
> >
> >Badenhorst, S. 2008. Subsistence change among farming communities in
> >southern Africa during the last two millennia: a search for potential
> >causes. In: Badenhorst, S. Mitchell, P. & Driver, J. C. (eds) Animals and
> >People: Archaeozoological Papers in Honour of Ina Plug, 215-228. Oxford:
> >British Archaeological Series 1849.
> >
> >Schapera, I. 1962. The Tswana. London: International African Institute.
> >
> >Braker, M. J. E., H. M. J. Udo and E. C. Webb. 2002. Impacts of
> intervention
> >objectives in goat production within subsistence farming systems in South
> >Africa. South African Journal of Animal Science 32(3):185-191.
> >
> >Newman, E. I. 2002. Medieval sheep-corn farming: how much grain yield
> could
> >each sheep support? Agricultural History Review 50(2):164-180.
> >
> >Sieff, D. F. 1997. Herding strategies of the Datoga pastoralists of
> >Tanzania: is household labor a limiting factor. Human Ecology
> 25(4):519-544.
> >
> >Sutter, J. W. 1987. Cattle and inequality: herd size differences and
> >pastoral production among the Fulani of northeastern Senegal. Africa
> >57(2):196-218.
> >
> >All best,
> >Shaw
> >
> >
> >Dr. Shaw Badenhorst
> >Department of Archaeozoology
> >Transvaal Museum
> >PO Box 413
> >Pretoria
> >0001
> >South Africa
> >
> >
> >On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 11:51:38 +0000 [log in to unmask] wrote:
> > > Another general query.....any suggestions?
> > >
> > > Dear Jacqui,
> > >
> > > A collegue has asked me to enquire from you if you know the source of
> > > a quote that crofters would need 50 sheep in order to survive a year.
> > > If you have any figures on how many sheep, cows and bulls were
> > > consderd the minimum by such farming groups that would be appreciated.
> > > He is trying to work out how much livestock Neolithic farmers might
> > > have needed in order to survive a year.
> > >
> > > Many thanks.
> > >
> > > Best wishes,
> > >
> > > Paul.
> > >
>
>
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