Foodways, Animal Husbandry and Nipmuc Identity: Faunal Analysis from Sarah Boston’s Farmstead, Grafton, MA, 1790–1840

Abstract

This study explores the processes by which some New England Native American households incorporated animal husbandry into their subsistence practices from the seventeenth century onward, as well as the political ramifications of this adoption. Faunal remains recovered from the Sarah Boston Farmstead site, a Nipmuc household in Massachusetts (1790–1840), suggest that the inhabitants used a variety of meat procurement strategies, including the killing of domesticated livestock, hunting wild animals, and purchasing provisions from local butchery shops. Over the course of several generations, these practices became part of habitual Nipmuc practices that continued to play a role in communal cohesion.