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Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Nicolas Delsol, "Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study" (UP of Florida, 2024)
Description: In Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study (University Press of Florida, 2024), Nicolas Delsol compares zooarchaeological and material evidence from sites across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to show how the introduction of cattle, beginning with imports by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s, shaped colonial American society. Before European colonization, cows were vital in European and African societies but were unknown to the Native communities of the Western Hemisphere.This book traces their impact in the Americas by using a broad range of methods, such as ancient DNA analyses on faunal collections from major postcolumbian sites. Dels...