Alum Hart to Speak for OPAC Third Thursday
Date: Thursday, July 15, 2021 - 19:00
Thursday July 15, 2021, Online: Old Pueblo Archaeology Center’s “Third Thursday Food for Thought” free Zoom online dinnertime program featuring “Talking Turkey: Domestic Turkeys in the US Southwest’s Archeological Record (and a Little on Them Today),” a presentation by Sharlot Hart
7:00–8:30 p.m. AZ/Mountain Standard Time (same as Pacific Daylight Time). Free
SoA alum Sharlot Hart* (M.A. Applied Archaeology, 2015) will recount an often-surprising history of the domestication and husbandry of turkeys in the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest (SW/NW). Ancient turkey use in what is today’s US Southwest is well recorded, if not publicly well known, starting about 1 CE. While macaws are known to have ceremonial connections and are distributed along trade networks in the SW/NW, traces of turkeys largely are found in areas where wild turkeys abound. Recent research has focused on two assumptions about archaeological turkeys: the wild subspecies that was domesticated, and the purpose of domestication and intensive husbandry (spoiler…it wasn’t all about food!). Discover the husbandry practices and reasons behind turkey domestication yesterday and today. This presentation will walk us through recent research, oral histories, and examples of ancient practices that exemplify why “talking turkey” is still so important.
To register go to https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_i1jbqpOGQvSPGLpsaus0Xg. For more information contact Old Pueblo at info@oldpueblo.org or 520-798-1201. For a flyer with color photos about the above-listed activity, please send an email to info@oldpueblo.org with “Send July 15 Third Thursday flyer” in the email subject line.
*Sharlot Hart is an archeologist with the National Park Service–Southern Arizona Office (NPS spells archeologist without the “ae” digraph!).
Image: Turkey-feather jacket found in Tularosa Cave, New Mexico (Figure 149 in “Culture of the Ancient Pueblos of the Upper Gila River Region, New Mexico and Arizona” by Walter Hough (1914, Smithsonian Institution)
Anthro News Digest date: 06/11/2021