Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“Wild Neat Cattle…”: Using Domesticated Livestock To Engineer Colonial Landscapes In Seventeenth-Century Maryland, Valerie M. J. Hall

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The excavation of two 17th-century sites in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, provides an opportunity to explore the impacts of domesticated livestock on the surrounding landscape. Faunal assemblages are analyzed following Henry Miller’s (1984, 1988) foundational study of subsistence practices of early English colonists in the Tidewater region. Data sets from Sparrow’s Rest (18AN1436) and Shaw’s Folly (18AN339) are examined to determine the percentages of domestic livestock vs. wild game consumed by the families at each site as compared to the patterns identified on contemporaneous sites in Miller’s survey, as well as to elucidate potential environmental impacts from the free-ranging herds …