The Market for Meat in Colonial Cuenca: A Seventeenth-Century Urban Faunal Assemblage from the Southern Highlands of Ecuador

Abstract

Excavation of a midden in the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, revealed faunal remains from a 17th-century elite urban family residence. this faunal data, combined with archival research on the Penas/Ruiz family, demonstrates that the family raised sheep, cattle, and pigs for sale to the urban market in Cuenca. The absence of camelid and guinea pig remains in this faunal assemblage demonstrates that Eurasian ungulates were favored meat animals at this urban, Andean colonial-elite site.