I agree with Larry McKee on pigs and their advantages. They is also
(depending on the system of running the hogs and the breeds of cattle and
mutton) more likely to have great slabs of fat (good for nutrition at the
poorer end of the social spectrum).  As well, could we be looking at some
kind of "settling in" phenomenon, culturally? Here I speak from rank
ignorance as a zooarchaeologist of prehistoric materials. Is it possible
that over time, Southeastern people culturally descended from the British
Isles "got over" their fixation on pastoral stock (sheep, cattle) as
signifiers of wealth and status when adjusting to a set of climates that
really tended to favor plant-based agricultural systems of production
rather than ranching -- this, combined with the increasing integration of
production into regional, national, international economies, and the
"efficiencies" demanded?
 
Diane Gifford-Gonzalez
 
>     I don't think it is so much that pig bones are absent from colonial
>contexts, I think that they are there, but in much lower quantities than what
>is seen in both archaeological and documentary sources on more recent (i.e.
>post 1800) sites in the U.S. South.  Off the top of my head, I recall
>beef-mutton-pork remains are fairly even in the big samples available from
>18th-C. Chesapeake sites, with beef a little, or a lot ahead in particular
>cases, but here at the Hermitage for strictly 19th C. contexts the MNI ratio
>of Pork:Beef:Mutton is close to 8:1:1.  I think (and other archaeologists and
>historians listening in are invited to add their takes) that the transition
>to pork reflects the fact that it yields a big return for little investment,
>it preserves easily and pretty palatably, and it tastes pretty good
>(especially barbecued, with a little spicy sauce, and a corn cake on the
>side).  It just seems to have taken southerners about a century to figure
>this all out.
>     Gotta go.  Late for lunch.
>                    Larry
 
 
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Diane Gifford-Gonzalez                                 [log in to unmask]
Professor, Anthropology                                408-459-5900 fax
Curator, Archaeology Archives                          408-459-3366 message
                           Department of Anthropology
                           Social Sciences I, Rm 317
                           University of California
                           Santa Cruz CA 95064 USA
 
Visit our Laboratory Web Site: http://zzyx.ucsc.edu/~jjosh/lab.html
 
Visit my Zooarchaeology Course Web Site: http://wwwcatsic.ucsc.edu/~anth179
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