Research and Selected Publications

My research addresses Native American and European experiences in the early colonial period, particularly from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. I am interested in the consequences of European colonization of North America, specifically the introduction of Eurasian livestock into indigenous subsistence systems, the effect of livestock on North American landscapes, and the integration of indigenous labor into expanding European market economies. The technical approach that I take to this research is zooarchaeology, the study of non-human animal remains from archaeological contexts.

Southeastern Historical Zooarchaeology

Before arriving at the University of Arizona, my research program focused on the early historic period in southeastern North America. At the site of the Upper Creek Native American village of Fusihatchee, in Alabama, I found that the Creeks were heavily involved as commodity producers in the expanding European market economy. Relationships between Creeks and Europeans were primarily structured by economic interactions. The Creeks furnished deerskins for what was an eighteenth-century world economic system that tied the leatherworking industries of England and France to Creek labor in the Southeast. The Creeks maintained an important role as deerskin producers until the turn of the nineteenth century when loss of land to white encroachment, among other factors, lead the waning and collapse of the deerskin trade. The Creeks lost their primary access to European-manufactured finished goods on which they depended, and the loss of land made hunting wild game an increasingly untenable strategy. Low frequencies of introduced Eurasian domesticated livestock in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggest that the Creeks obtained small quantities of meat from domesticated livestock through trade or the hunting of feral livestock, but not through their own husbandry efforts. My research at Fusihatchee indicates that by the turn of the nineteenth century, the Creeks began to replace hunting with husbandry.

My southeastern research also addresses the lives of the colonizers. The eighteenth-century presidio Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Los Adaes served as the capital of Spanish Texas from 1729-1772, and was the easternmost settlement in Spanish Texas (now Louisiana). I am currently preparing a publication with Dr. Diana Loren on the food and tableware remains from two mestizo households, located outside the presidio, and the governor’s house, located inside the presidio walls. The Spanish colonial authorities held expectations with regard to diet and material culture based on ethnicity. Social status was ascribed according to the Spanish concept of racial “purity.” Those with more Spanish ancestry were expected to dress, behave, and eat in ways that were different from subjects with predominantly Native American or African heritage. Diana's research shows that elite households attempted to maintain a household in keeping with Spanish colonial expectations with regard to material culture, while my research indicates that their diet often included less desirable foods, differing little from that of their lower-status mestizo neighbors.

 Southwestern Historical Zooarchaeology

Since arriving at the University of Arizona, I have expanded my geographical focus into the Southwest, specifically the Spanish colonial period in northern Sonora and southern Arizona (a region known to the Spanish as the Pimería Alta). Zooarchaeological analysis from Mission San Agustín del Tucson (~AD1790-1820) indicates that the O’odham Native Americans at the mission were primarily dependent upon animal husbandry, not hunting. The analysis of faunal remains from the mission, supported by Desert Archaeology, Inc. (who undertook the excavation of the site), is the first large, full-scale zooarchaeological analysis from a Pimería Alta mission. High fragmentation and other assemblage characteristics suggest that the missionized O’odham were involved in tallow processing, likely for the manufacture of candles and soap that were in high demand locally, and by mining communities in northern Sonora. The zooarchaeological evidence from San Agustín ties O’odham labor at the mission to a larger regional economic network. This research will appear as a co-authored manuscript with Dr. Vincent LaMotta in an upcoming volume of the International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

Mission Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocóspera is one of the earliest missions in the Pimería Alta, receiving its first resident priest in 1697. INAH, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (Mexico), began investigation of the mission site in the Fall of 2004. I am collaborating with Arq. Júpiter Martínez, the project director, to examine zooarchaeological remains from Cocóspera (Sonora) dating to the early eighteenth century. Early results indicate that native labor at Cocóspera was also mobilized in the secondary livestock products (tallow) industry.

In April 2007, I was awarded a University of Arizona Faculty Small Grant to test the applicability of stable isotope analyses to the reconstruction of livestock grazing practices at eighteenth-century missions.

Zooarchaeology and Wildlife Conservation

In 2004, Mr. Richard Lange, Dr. E. Charles Adams and myself received funding from the Arizona Game and Fish Department for a project entitled “Conservation Applications of Archaeological Data". In collaboration with AZSITE, the state site files, we created a GIS-linked database of zooarchaeological remains from the state of Arizona, dubbed “FaunAZ”. Wildlife managers can use the database for information on the historic ranges of vertebrate species as reflected by their presence in archaeological sites. The database will also be a catalyst for larger-scale zooarchaeological research. The database and GIS data was designed so that the project can be made available for public access, providing valuable public exposure to archaeological research in Arizona.

Click here to access FaunAZ!

Selected Publications

Pavao-Zuckerman, Barnet (2007) Deerskins and Domesticates: Creek Subsistence and Economic Strategies in the Historic Period. American Antiquity 72(1):5-33.

Pavao-Zuckerman, Barnet and Vincent M. LaMotta (2007) Missionization and Economic Change in the Pimería Alta: The Zooarchaeology of San Agustín de Tucson. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 11(3):241-268.

Pavao-Zuckerman, Barnet and Elizabeth J. Reitz (2006) Introduction and Adoption of Eurasian Livestock in North America. In Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 3: Environment, Origins, and Population, edited by Douglas Ubelaker, pp. 485-491. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

Pavao-Zuckerman, Barnet 2000 Vertebrate Subsistence in the Mississippian-Historic Period Transition. Southeastern Archaeology 19(2):135-144.

Pavao, Barnet and Peter W. Stahl (1999) Structural Density Assays of Leporid Skeletal Elements with Implications for Taphonomic, Actualistic and Archaeological Research. Journal of Archaeological Science 26(1):53-66. 

Email Pavao-Z. for more information.

University of Arizona / Arizona State Museum / Department of Anthropology