Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas

How the arrival of cattle transformed life

and society in the Americas

In

this book, Nicolas Delsol compares zooarchaeological and material evidence from

sites across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to show how the introduction of

cattle, beginning with imports by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s, shaped

colonial American society.

Before

European colonization, cows were vital in European and African societies but

were unknown to the Native communities of the Western Hemisphere. This book traces

their impact in the Americas by using a broad range of methods, such as ancient

DNA analyses on faunal collections from major postcolumbian sites. Delsol describes

the place of cattle in the colonial culture and landscape, beginning with the

transportation of cattle across the Atlantic and moving to herding practices in

new habitats, butchery techniques, and the production, trading, and use of cow

byproducts.

Cattle in the

Postcolumbian Americas is the first large-scale regional archaeological

study of the introduction of a European domesticated species to the Americas. Using

both zooarchaeological and historical data, Delsol argues that the arrival of

cattle was a major consequence of European colonization with effects that have often

been overlooked.