Abstract

As one of the only classes in the animal kingdom capable of flight, birds are privy to a realm of movement that humans can only partially control. Birds possess specific traits and engage in a variety of behaviors that directly affect the mechanics of capture and use, such as gregariousness and flock size, preferences in nesting and feeding locations, wing strength and readiness to flush, and aggressiveness and territoriality. Human-bird relationships also move beyond the semantics of capture to cases in which birds are kept in captivity as sources of feathers and/or awaiting sacrifice, as pets, and as domestic birds. This chapter makes use of data from Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, which was the center of a large regional system in the Pueblo II period (850–1150 CE). This chapter considers the qualities and behaviors of avifaunal taxa that would have influenced human-bird interactions and discusses the implications of these behaviors and the unique ways birds may have exerted agentive force and control over the experiences of capture, captivity, management, and use.

The majority of research on ancient human-animal interaction positions humans as subjects and animals as objects, a dichotomy in which animals are a raw material to be exploited by human actors (Hill 2013:118). But many characteristics of wild animals are capable of “overwhelming human capacities” (Smith, chapter 1, this volume) in a moment of attempted capture, such as the swiftness of a deer, the power of a mountain lion, or the speed of a jackrabbit. Birds, as one of the only vertebrate animals capable of flight, are privy to a realm of movement that humans can only partially control. Birds also possess many other biological and behavioral traits that can affect the outcome of human-bird interactions. This chapter demonstrates the analytical value of considering birds as agents in their interactions with humans and how these characteristics affected past human-bird relationships, using an archaeological example from the prehispanic American Southwest.

Chaco Canyon, located in northwestern New Mexico, was the center of a large regional system during the Pueblo II period from 850 to 1150 CE. Birds have figured prominently in Pueblo life throughout the Southwest during this and other periods (e.g., Fewkes 1900; Gnabasik 1981; Hill 2000; Tyler 1979), and excavations in Chaco Canyon have produced sizable and rich avifaunal collections. This chapter utilizes the avifaunal collections from three Chaco sites—Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58—to consider the intricate dynamics of the human-bird relationship. A quantitative model is developed to deal with the species-level biological and behavioral traits of those birds that would have affected interaction between prehispanic peoples and the avifaunal landscape around them. By shifting birds from the position of object to that of subject, we can acknowledge the “mutually generative relationships” (Smith, chapter 1, this volume) between humans and animals, in which the actions of the animal affect the actions of the human and vice versa (see also Ammerman, chapter 10, and Tomášková, chapter 11, both this volume).

Animal and Avian Agency

Zooarchaeological research has moved well beyond considering only the utilitarian role of animals in the past, to include the social, symbolic, and emotional roles they have played in human societies (e.g., Morphy 1989; Russell 2012; Ryan and Crabtree 1995; Shipman 2010). Indeed, animals appear to have been an integral part of the human story even at deep evolutionary time depths, when reciprocal interactions became an important part of the human (and the animal) experience (Shipman 2010). Despite the recognition of the intimate connection between humans and animals and of the broad range of roles animals have played beyond serving as a source of human nutrition, much zooarchaeological research continues to position animals as objects acted upon by humans who use them as food, raw materials, symbols, sacrifices, or pets (Hill 2013:117; Overton and Hamilakis 2013:114). This orientation in thinking posits a one-way relationship where the animal is a passive resource to be consumed (either literally or figuratively) by the human.

As Erica Hill (2013:118) has observed, the “human-subject/animal-object dichotomy” leaves little space for the consideration of animal agency. Grounded in the Western ontological nature-culture divide, the anthropocentricity of approaches to human-animal relationships of the past largely assume “passivity on the part of non-human animals” (Overton and Hamilakis 2013:114) even where they are accorded special, highly symbolic roles in ritual and ideology. Following Nick J. Overton and Yannis Hamilakis (2013:114), the perspective employed in this chapter accepts that both human and non-human animals were responsible for “co-shaping” their interactions with one another (see also Quintus et al., chapter 9, this volume). By acknowledging that human-animal relationships are deeply mutually influential and multidirectional rather than unidirectional, the intricacies of every human-animal interaction—whether in procurement, management, companionship, use, death, or otherwise—can be better understood. From this perspective, it is easy to afford animals an equal chance at participation in human-animal interactions and, especially in the case of wild animals, a chance at determining the outcome of each interaction. This “co-shaping” of human-animal engagement is the backbone of a more realistic, non-anthropocentric zoontology (Overton and Hamilakis 2013).

Humans interact physically with wild animals in a variety of ways, including (but not limited to) capture and subsequent consumption or retention in captivity. Studies of the procurement of wild animals that focus on the semantics of capture usually focus on the human half of this experience, for instance, on the methods of procurement employed. But the live animal is an “autonomous being” (Overton and Hamilakis 2013:116) whose existence and behavior are not a priori defined by human presence or decision. So how, in any specific attempt to capture a wild animal, did the nature of that animal (both as a specific species and as a sentient individual) affect that interaction? Humans of the past repeatedly interfaced with this independently constituted agency in intimate moments of interaction that did not always result in simple domination. Individual birds in the natural world unarguably possess agency and decision-making abilities that vary at many levels, including at the level of the taxonomic group (species or subspecies); the level of the population; the level of the nest, feeding, or roosting group; and the level of the individual (specific personalities). This agency would have affected human-bird interactions both in terms of finding desired wild birds on the landscape and in terms of the physical experience of capturing or killing a bird.

The biological and behavioral characteristics of birds should be considered in any study of the premodern “use” of birds, since these details would have played an integral and sometimes deterministic role in each individual interaction in the relationship between humans and birds and in societal perception of birds. Surely, the specific characteristics of different types of birds were noted, understood, and considered by people of the past. The endeavor to consider avian agency in the past leads to a better understanding not only of the entangled nature of human-bird engagements but of the great lengths to which many human societies were willing to go to acquire birds of value.

Birds in the Pueblo World

Ethnographic research over the last century and a half has documented the importance of birds in the Pueblo world. Today and historically, birds serve as symbols, characters in narratives, participants in ritual, and sources of feathers and sometimes food (Fewkes 1900; Gnabasik 1981; Hill 2000; Tyler 1979; Voth 1912). Birds of prey, waterbirds, parrots, and colorful passerine birds maintain particular symbolic significance (Tyler 1979).

Compared to other regions, the US Southwest benefits from a robust history of avifaunal research, with scholarly interest in the ancient use of birds since at least the 1920s. Archaeologists working in the Pueblo region have largely equated bird use with ritual based on ethnographic parallels, though some birds were and still are eaten. Scholars have used avifaunal remains to address broad anthropological questions concerning topics such as animal domestication, long-distance trade, ritual and religion, social organization, and the relationship between agricultural intensification and birds (e.g., Bishop 2019; Bishop and Fladd 2018; Creel and McKusick 1994; Durand 2003; Eckert and Clark 2009; Emslie 1981; Grimstead et al. 2014; Hargrave 1970; Lipe et al. 2016; Newbold et al. 2012; Roler 1999; Speller et al. 2010; Watson et al. 2015).

Given the robusticity and ever-increasing popularity of avifaunal studies in the US Southwest and elsewhere, (zoo)archaeological research can greatly benefit from consideration of the agentive behaviors and characteristics of animals that constricted, enabled, or otherwise affected human behavior in the past. The model presented here provides one example of how qualitative information about species-level characteristics can be factored into more traditionally quantitative zooarchaeological analyses, creating a more robust understanding of human-animal interaction. The consideration of animal behavior should always be, and often is, a component of zooarchaeological research, and the model below is one example of how this might be achieved in a data-driven way.

Three Chacoan Sites of Investigation

The central stretch of Chaco Canyon and its surrounding mesas (figure 8.1) contains at least twelve monumental, often multi-story pueblo structures known as “great houses,” which likely served as community centers, residences, and places of pilgrimage. These great houses are surrounded by a number of smaller, usually single-story pueblos called “small sites” or “small houses.” The influence of Chaco Canyon on the surrounding landscape was greatest in the eleventh century CE, when construction of Chaco-style great houses outside of and distant from the canyon was at its height. Characteristics of the “Chaco phenomenon” (Irwin-Williams 1972)—or the characteristics of Chacoan society evident within the canyon as well as Chaco’s influence on the surrounding region during the Pueblo II period—include this vast system of outlier communities, an extensive road network, and the importation of many valued goods from other parts of the Southwest, California, and Mexico, including parrots, cacao, marine shell, copper bells, turquoise, timber, pottery, and agricultural products (e.g., Crown and Hurst 2009; Crown and Wills 2003; Heitman and Plog 2015; Lekson 2006; Mathien 2001; Nelson 2006; Toll 2006; Watson et al. 2015). Much debate remains about the social configurations of the Chaco phenomenon, including the degree and basis of inequality, Chaco Canyon’s primary function within its regional system, and the nature of social organization in the canyon (Kantner and Kintigh 2006; Mills 2002; Schachner 2015:57).

The largest and most extensively studied great house in Chaco Canyon is Pueblo Bonito, located on the north side of the canyon. Its ground floor alone consisted of over 350 rooms, and parts of the original pueblo stood four stories tall. Initial construction began in the mid-ninth century CE, with expansion of the pueblo continuing into the twelfth century (Judd 1964; Lekson 1984). The acceptance of the presence of some level of inequality in Chaco Canyon is predominantly based on research at Pueblo Bonito, where large quantities of goods imported from other areas were found and two elaborate, rich burial suites were discovered (Plog and Heitman 2010; Lekson 2006; Nelson 2006; Toll 2006). The pueblo was primarily excavated in the 1890s and 1920s by the American Museum of Natural History and the National Geographic Society, with more recent work conducted by archaeologists from the University of New Mexico (e.g., Crown 2016b).

The sites known as Bc 57 and Bc 58 are two adjacent small house sites located across the canyon from Pueblo Bonito. Adam S. Watson (2012) has argued that feasting events at these sites may have been associated with ceremonies taking place at nearby Casa Rinconada, an isolated (standalone) great kiva that likely served as a central location for ritual activity. Bc 57 and Bc 58 were excavated by the University of New Mexico–School of American Research field school in the 1940s (81). The single-story Bc 57 has nine rooms and four kivas (84). Bc 57 was probably constructed in a single episode, with one additional room added later in time. Bc 58, also a single-story small house, consists of fourteen rooms and two kivas. But unlike Bc 57, it may have been constructed and remodeled in stages over time (85). Radiocarbon dating of animal bone from both Bc 57 and Bc 58 suggests that the former was occupied during parts of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries CE, while the latter was occupied in the tenth and eleventh centuries (109–110). Thus, occupation at both small houses overlapped with occupation at Pueblo Bonito.

Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58 were chosen for comparison for several reasons. First, Bonito is the most thoroughly excavated of the intra-canyon great houses, and Bc 57 and Bc 58 were completely or nearly completely excavated. Second, Bc 57 and Bc 58 have the largest avifaunal assemblages of all Bc (small house) sites. Lastly, this combination of sites enables the comparison of great houses to small houses and small houses to each other.

Human-Bird Engagement: A Model

Birds possess specific biological and physiological traits and engage in a variety of behaviors that directly affect the mechanics of interactions between them and humans. The most obvious variable affecting human-bird interaction is their ability to fly, which makes them unique compared to almost all other vertebrate animals. While almost all birds fly, different species are physically distinct from one another in appearance and have different behavioral traits and tendencies. These species-specific characteristics, classified in ornithology as a part of the “life history” of a species, include, for example, habitat preference, nesting location, food source, and various components of behavior. The model presented in this chapter relies on eleven aspects—or variables—of bird life history, including physiological, biological, and behavioral traits.

Five physiological/biological aspects and six behavioral characteristics were isolated as particularly relevant for influencing the interaction between humans and birds in the prehispanic past. Physiological/biological traits include (1) the morphology of the foot, which is related to a bird’s ability to grasp, pierce, and hurt aggressors and prey; (2) the size and morphology of the beak, or a bird’s ability to injure an aggressor with its beak; (3) body size, which can affect a bird’s ability to struggle against capture in the case of very large birds but can also affect the visibility of the bird; (4) feather color, which affects visibility to humans; and (5) strength of flight, which affects the bird’s ability to evade capture. Behavioral characteristics that affect the engagement between birds and humans include (1) aggressiveness/territoriality of the bird, or the readiness of a bird to defend itself against other birds, which, in turn, is related to home range size and population density; (2) gregariousness/sociability of the bird, assessed through the size of the groups in which a species spends most of its time nesting, feeding/foraging, or roosting; (3) feeding/foraging location, specifying whether a species forages or hunts from the air or on the ground; (4) nesting location, as easy or challenging places for humans to access; (5) migration behavior, which affects the proportion of the year that a species will spend in a certain area; and (6) whether a species is diurnal or nocturnal, which again affects visibility to humans. These variables can be quantified in a model that allows us to compare among different species the relative likelihood of humans finding a bird and the difficulty of capture, as well as different avifaunal assemblages or samples thereof.

To construct an analytical model, the variables listed here were rearranged into two new categories that speak more directly to human-bird interaction (table 8.1). The first, hereafter called Visibility Factors, affect the likelihood of happening upon, finding, or otherwise coming into contact with a bird of a given taxon. The second, Interaction Factors, affect the actual in-the-moment physical interaction between humans and birds. While Visibility Factors indirectly affect human-bird interactions, Interaction Factors directly affect those interactions. Where a specific species may have been required and sought after for a particular reason, Visibility Factors would affect the ability of someone to actually find a bird of that species while searching for it. Even when a bird may be taken opportunistically in the pursuit of some other resource (e.g., construction timber; e.g., English et al. 2001) or the performance of some other task (e.g., ridding agricultural fields of pests), Interaction Factors will still directly affect the encounter.

Table 8.1. Visibility and Interaction Factors in birds

The eleven variables identified above were recorded for each species present in the avifaunal assemblages from Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58. Species-level information was gathered from multiple ornithological sources and birding guides (Cartron 2010; Elphick 2016; Sibley 2001, 2014; Cornell Lab of Ornithology [https://www.allaboutbirds.org/]), which, of course, present the characteristics and ranges of these species based on the observance of modern birds. While most biological features and many behaviors are unlikely to have changed too drastically in the last 1,000 years, there is the possibility that certain things, such as range distributions and even nesting behavior, may have shifted slightly. Here, I assume that the modern characteristics of these species can stand in for their counterparts of the ninth–twelfth centuries.

For each variable (e.g., nesting location) in table 8.1, the qualitative values (e.g., ground, tree, cliff) recorded from ornithological sources were arranged on a spectrum (figure 8.2). For Visibility Factors, the spectrum runs from “more visible/more likely to be encountered” to “less visible/less likely to be encountered.” For example, options for migration behavior include year-round residents, species that only spend one season (breeding or non-breeding) in the area, and those that only pass through on their migratory routes. Each of these aspects correlates with successively less time in the area over the course of the year.

Interaction Factors were arranged from “easier to capture” to “harder to capture.” The variable referred to as gregariousness, for instance, describes the tendency of the bird to spend time in groups of its conspecifics. Very social birds forage, roost, nest, or otherwise spend most of their time congregating in large groups; somewhat social birds spend some of their time in groups but also perform some activities alone; highly solitary birds spend no time in large groups. This variable also qualifies as both a Visibility Factor and an Interaction Factor. The more birds that are present in a group at the same time, the more visible they will be (Visibility Factor) and the more likely an attempt to capture one will be successful simply because there are more birds present (Interaction Factor).

After this information was gathered for each species in the three assemblages, the options were converted to numbers arranged on a scale, for example, from 1 to 3. Following figure 8.2, values were assigned (starting with “1”) from the left side of the scale, increasing moving right. For each species, the values for all Visibility Factors were summed together to give each species a Visibility Score, and the same was done for the Interaction Factors, to produce an Interaction Score. The higher the Visibility Score, the less likely one might be to spot, encounter, or come across a given species. The higher the Interaction Score, the more difficult a bird of a given species is to physically capture. When the total Visibility Score and Interaction Score are added together for each species, we are left with a total value, the Total Procurement Score, ranging from species that are more visible and easier to capture to those that are less visible and more challenging to capture. For example, of the species examined here, the one with the lowest Total Procurement Score is the scaled quail. The scaled quail is a highly social, ground-nesting, ground-foraging, diurnal, year-round resident of New Mexico—all factors that make it more visible. It has a small body size, a small beak, and small, non-threatening talons; is not aggressive; and spends much of its time in large groups—all factors that make it easier to capture. On the other end of the spectrum, the species with the highest Total Procurement Score is the bald eagle, a highly solitary bird that nests in tall trees, hunts from the air, and only winters in New Mexico. In interactions with humans, it is a large-bodied, strong flyer, with sharp talons and beak, that is territorial/aggressive and highly solitary—all factors that render this bird harder to capture. An example of a bird with a median Total Procurement Score is the common raven, which is moderately gregarious and forages on the ground but nests in trees.

The Total Procurement Score is therefore reflective of all of the interaction and visibility variables and thus the biological and behavioral characteristics of each species that are relevant when considering the interaction between humans and birds. In this sense, the Total Procurement Score also reflects the total investment put into acquiring a given species. The systematic recording and quantification of these characteristics of bird biology and behavior allow us to explore patterns within and between avifaunal assemblages and to assess the intensity of interest in different species on the part of past peoples.

Patterns of Bird-Human Interactions at Chaco

Multiple compelling patterns emerge from the avifaunal collections from Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58. Data were collected from multiple sources; the majority of the avifaunal assemblage from intramural Pueblo Bonito has been analyzed by the author. These data are supplemented by information from two additional sources: first, the report of faunal remains from excavations in the two mounds on the south side of Pueblo Bonito, excavated in the early 2000s by W. H. Wills and Patricia L. Crown of the University of New Mexico (Crown 2016b) and published by Shaw Badenhorst and colleagues (2016). Second, data from Crown’s NEH-funded excavations and analyses of Room 28 were provided by Caitlin S. Ainsworth, Patricia L. Crown, Emily Lena Jones, and Stephanie E. Franklin of the University of New Mexico (Ainsworth et al. 2018, 2020). Vertebrate fauna, including avifaunal remains, from Bc 57 and Bc 58 were first analyzed and reported by Adam Watson (2012) and subsequently reanalyzed by the author. A total of twenty-eight species have been identified from Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58. Rather than focusing on a range of traditional zooarchaeological variables, the present analysis focuses only on the species1 present in an assemblage and on the NISP (Number of Identified Specimens) of each species. Thus, the numbers presented here do not reflect the entire avifaunal assemblage for each site, only those remains identified to species (see Bishop 2019 for analyses of entire avifaunal assemblages).

A range of birds that are local and non-local to the San Juan Basin are present in the assemblages of Pueblo Bonito, Bc 57, and Bc 58 considered here (figure 8.3). Table 8.2 presents each species with its Total Procurement Score (Visibility + Interaction Scores) and NISP by site. Total Procurement Scores range from 30 (bald eagle) to 16 (scaled quail). Galliforms, heavy-bodied birds that feed on the ground (e.g., turkey, quail), score the lowest, followed by a variety of small corvids (e.g., black-billed magpie and different jays). Birds of the orders Strigiformes (owls) and Accipitriformes (which includes hawks, falcons, eagles, and vultures) tend to score high, with Total Procurement Scores ranging from 25 to 30. Eagles (golden and bald) score the highest of all species identified in the three Chaco assemblages, followed by owls (great horned and western screech), while the hawks and falcons score between 27 and 29.5. A variety of passerine birds and others are interspersed with median scores.

Conclusion

During the occupation of Chaco Canyon, high-value birds, particularly raptors, were of great importance as evidenced by the frequencies with which their remains occur and the proportion of assemblages their remains comprise. The significance of these types of birds has been demonstrated ethnographically. The disproportionate contribution to these assemblages of species with the highest Total Procurement Scores stands in opposition to the expectations of a more diet-oriented use of birds. Many species that are gregarious, ground-dwelling, and medium- to large-bodied and that would have provided good additional sources of food are common in northwestern New Mexico. The low proportion of these birds, with low Total Procurement Scores, suggests that wild birds—besides turkey—were likely not sought out for food. Quite the opposite pattern is obvious; the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon routinely desired and acquired types of birds that, relative to other species, would have been challenging to procure. This fact underlines their evident significance to people of the past, with the implication that these birds likely figured prominently in ritual practices.

Differences in the scale of bird procurement and the proportions of high-value birds at each site may indicate differences in the nature or scale of the types of ritual that took place at each of these pueblos. While inhabitants of Pueblo Bonito imported high-investment parrots in addition to acquiring birds of prey, people at the small sites across the canyon focused on local but still hard to capture birds, with this endeavor greater at Bc 57 than at Bc 58. Procuring particularly significant types of birds may have been a specialized task undertaken by only certain individuals or social groups, a pattern that has been noted ethnographically in the case of raptors at Hopi (Fewkes 1900; Voth 1912).

The model presented here provides a way to incorporate the agency of wild animals into our understanding of human-animal interactions in the past. It considers eleven aspects of bird biology and behavior and provides a way to include them in zooarchaeological analyses. Calculating Total Procurement Scores allows the comparison of different species relative to one another and affords an understanding of investment in bird procurement at a single site. Incorporating NISP allows comparisons between sites and would be equally applicable to differentiating between different areas of a single site and different types of contexts and to examining change over time. This model is easily adaptable to avifaunal assemblages around the world.

When considering human interactions with birds and other wild animals, detailed consideration must be given to the characteristics of particular species. Birds are uniquely capable of flight, but, like other animals, they have other characteristics that constrain or otherwise determine the outcome of a single interaction between them and humans. By considering agentive actions on both sides of the human-animal relationship, we can acknowledge the role birds played in these interactions, in which they were not merely passive objects to be consumed and controlled by active human subjects. From this perspective, human “use” of birds becomes human engagement with birds and acknowledges that both parties co-shaped their relationship with one another. Presumably, it is this agency endowed by behavioral and biological characteristics, especially concerning flight, that has given birds such symbolic importance throughout time and throughout the world.

Acknowledgments. I am grateful to Monica Smith for organizing the conference session in which an initial version of this chapter was presented and for providing feedback. I am also grateful to Patricia Crown, Emily Lena Jones, Caitlin Ainsworth, and Stephanie Franklin for graciously sharing avifaunal data from Pueblo Bonito Room 28. Adam Watson, Greg Schachner, Tom Wake, Samantha Fladd, and Reuven Sinensky were all helpful sounding boards during the planning of this chapter. Funding for portions of the research presented in this chapter was provided by the National Science Foundation (Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Award 1817552), the Fred Plog Memorial Fellowship, the PaleoWest Foundation, and the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

Notes

References