An application of zooms to identify archaeological avian fauna from Teotihuacan, Mexico

Abstract

The remains of aquatic birds often represent the best surviving evidence for prehispanic lake exploitation in highland Central Mexico, an important center of urban development with vast lacustrine resources. Yet unlike the sustained focus on turkey husbandry in Mesoamerican research, the economic importance of ducks and other lacustrine birds has received little attention. The diversity of birds in Central Mexico presents challenges to species identification from skeletal remains. To overcome these challenges, we present a new application of ZooMS, a collagen-based identification technique, to identify archaeological avian fauna from Teotihuacan. We develop the first database of avian biomarkers to include specimens across multiple taxonomic groups and apply ZooMS on 295 bone fragments to identify fragmentary and unidentified avian remains from the Tlajinga district of Teotihuacan. Our results indicate that ZooMS has good potential to identify avian fauna to below family level and that the residents of Tlajinga exploited a range of aquatic birds.