HEAS Team Leader Contruibute Chapter to Book Exploring the History of Turkey Management and Domestication
HEAS Team Leader Günther Karl Kunst et al. contributed a chapter to the recent publication ‚Exploring the History of Turkey Management and Domestication‘.
The turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is an iconic bird, widely associated with festive dishes in Europe, North America, and Central America, and extensively raised worldwide. Yet, its long-term interactions with human societies remain poorly synthesized, with significant regional imbalances in research. The role of turkeys in North America has been extensively studied, while their post-colonial dispersal and evolving cultural significance globally have received far less attention.
This volume brings together specialists to explore the paleontology of Meleagris, the early stages of turkey management and domestication in North America, and its subsequent global expansion. Following a chronological structure, the first part examines turkey-human interactions in the Americas before European contact (~500 years ago), with chapters on well-studied regions (Southwestern USA, Northern Mexico, and Mesoamerica) alongside lesser-known areas (Southern Central America and Eastern USA). The second part traces the last 500 years of turkey history, exploring artistic depictions, historical accounts, and archaeozoological evidence from multiple European countries, spanning Western Europe to the Baltic and Central Europe. It also examines the global spread of domestic turkeys, their reintroduction to the Americas through the colonial economy, and their further dispersal across the Pacific.
Blending comprehensive syntheses with original case studies, this volume offers new insights into the history of turkey management, domestication, and cultural symbolism through to the 21st century.
Even though the early modern evidence for turkeys in the area of present-day Austria presented here is still very incomplete, initial findings can nevertheless be derived from both archaeological and written records, and their import and husbandry can be expected as early as 1530-1540. While turkeys were kept in a deer park at the Viennese Court together with other exotic animals, bone finds from nearby Orth Castle prove that they were also eaten at the same time. From the 17th century onwards, archaeological and written evidence increased between Vienna and Salzburg, including the first recommendations on how to keep turkeys properly. The evidence of turkey in the cesspit of a Salzburg inn around 1600 is remarkable, but this was located directly next to the residence of the Archbishop of Salzburg, so that upper-class costumers can be expected here. This also holds true for the evidence from Vienna’s Old University. It was not until the 18th century that turkey could be found on the menu of the urban middle class, albeit only in isolated cases such as weddings or anniversaries of guilds, all of which were celebrated in
more or less large groups in inns. However, as in the monastic milieu, it remained reserved for the high table on feast days.