University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Anthropology Faculty Publications Anthropology, Department of 5-28-2017 From Icon of Empire to National Emblem: New Evidence for the Fallow Deer of Barbuda Sophia Perdikaris The Graduate Center CUNY & Brooklyn College CUNY & Barbuda Research Complex,, [email protected] Allison Bain Universite Laval Sandrine Grouard Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle Karis Baker University of Durham Edith Gonzalez The Graduate Center CUNY & Brooklyn College CUNY & Barbuda Research Complex, See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons, and the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Perdikaris, Sophia; Bain, Allison; Grouard, Sandrine; Baker, Karis; Gonzalez, Edith; Hoelzel, A. Rus; Miller, Holly; Persaud, Reaksha; and Sykes, Naomi, "From Icon of Empire to National Emblem: New Evidence for the Fallow Deer of Barbuda" (2017). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 168. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/anthropologyfacpub/168 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Anthropology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Authors Sophia Perdikaris, Allison Bain, Sandrine Grouard, Karis Baker, Edith Gonzalez, A. Rus Hoelzel, Holly Miller, Reaksha Persaud, and Naomi Sykes This article is available at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ anthropologyfacpub/168 Environmental Archaeology The Journal of Human Palaeoecology ISSN: 1461-4103 (Print) 1749-6314 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yenv20 From Icon of Empire to National Emblem: New Evidence for the Fallow Deer of Barbuda Sophia Perdikaris, Allison Bain, Sandrine Grouard, Karis Baker, Edith Gonzalez, A. Rus Hoelzel, Holly Miller, Reaksha Persaud & Naomi Sykes To cite this article: Sophia Perdikaris, Allison Bain, Sandrine Grouard, Karis Baker, Edith Gonzalez, A. Rus Hoelzel, Holly Miller, Reaksha Persaud & Naomi Sykes (2018) From Icon of Empire to National Emblem: New Evidence for the Fallow Deer of Barbuda, Environmental Archaeology, 23:1, 47-55, DOI: 10.1080/14614103.2017.1349027 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2017.1349027 © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa Published online: 31 Jul 2017. UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Submit your article to this journal Article views: 796 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=yenv20 ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY, 2018 VOL. 23, NO. 1, 47–55 https://doi.org/10.1080/14614103.2017.1349027 From Icon of Empire to National Emblem: New Evidence for the Fallow Deer of Barbuda Sophia Perdikarisa,b,c, Allison Baind, Sandrine Grouarde, Karis Bakerf, Edith Gonzaleza,b,c, A. Rus Hoelzelf, Holly Millerg, Reaksha Persauda,b,c and Naomi Sykesg aHuman Ecodynamics Research Center, The Graduate Center CUNY, New York, NY, USA; bBrooklyn College CUNY, Brooklyn, NY USA; cBarbuda Research Complex, Codrington Barbuda, Antigua and Barbuda; dCELAT Research Centre, Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada; eUMR7209 Archéozoologie, Archéobotanique: Sociétés, Pratiques, Environnements, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Dept Homme & Environnement, Paris, France; fSchool of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, University of Durham, Durham, UK; gDepartment of Archaeology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY Barbuda and Antigua’s national animal is the fallow deer, Dama dama dama, a species native to the Received 16 October 2016 eastern Mediterranean that has been transported around the world by people during the last 8000 Accepted 28 May 2017 years. The timing and circumstances by which fallow deer came to be established on Barbuda are KEYWORDS currently uncertain but, by examining documentary, osteological and genetic evidence, this paper –Dama Barbuda; fallow deer; DNA; will consider the validity of existing theories. It will review the dynamics of human zooarchaeology relationships from the 1500s AD to the present day and consider how the meaning attached to this species has changed through time: from a symbol of colonial authority and dominance, to a ‘walking larder’ after the slave emancipation of 1834, and now an important part of the island’s economy and cultural heritage that requires careful management. Introduction to at least 1800s, since Charles Darwin collected and pre- served one black and two common skins during his visit According to Wilson and Reeder (2005) the Cervidae to the island. These skins are now curated by London’s in the Caribbean are today restricted to three species: Natural History Museum (Masseti 2011, 127). fallow deer Dama dama dama (Linnaeus 1758), brocket Sustainable fallow deer management, which seeks to deer Mazama americana (Rafinesque 1817), and white- strike a balance between biodiversity and over-grazing tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus (Zimmermann 1780). (as fallow deer populations can expand rapidly causing The Mazama americana and Odocoileus virginianus environmental damage) is an important element of occur naturally only on Trinidad, due to Pleistocene con- Barbuda’s ecotourism. For instance, on average, 120 nection with mainland South America (Wing 1962). The Red brocket deer (M. americana) is also archaeologically deer are culled each year by paying sports hunters present on Tobago (Steadman and Jones 2006). Recent (McComas 2013, 127). However, to date, there has Cytogenetic and mtDNA studies of Mazama demonstrate been no official survey documenting the fallow deer considerable karyotype and molecular diversity in these population on the island (e.g. age, sex, geographic dis- species and highlight their evolutionary history (Duarte, tribution, numbers). Our field observations over the González, and Maldonado 2008;Giovas,in press). past decade indicate that local people hunt, without The fallow deer is native to the eastern Mediterra- permits, from vehicles, on foot, horseback with or with- nean from where it has gradually been taken around out hunting dogs. While there is a local understanding the world, for varying reasons, by people. The species of optimal hunting periods, this is not respected by all was introduced into nearly all countries of Europe, and poaching is widespread. Ongoing ethno-historical South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, work focusing on bone material of hunted deer on sites Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay, as well as islands like Castle Hill (Baker et al. 2015; Perdikaris et al. 2013) in Fijian group, and the Lesser Antilles. Today the fal- along with additional material collected over the last 2 low deer is the national animal of Barbuda and Anti- years provide the best source of evidence available from gua, so synonymous with the islands it is represented which to consider the sustainability of Barbuda’s herd. on their coat of arms (Figure 1(b); McComas 2013, Considering the significance of fallow deer to Bar- 126). Two varieties of fallow deer – the common and buda’s natural environment, culture and economy, the black (Figure 1(c,d)) – currently inhabit Barbuda astonishingly little is known about when, how, and and the presence of these pelage variants dates back most importantly why this species was introduced to CONTACT Naomi Sykes [email protected] © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 48 S. PERDIKARIS ET AL. Figure 1. (a) Barbuda location map, (b) coat of arms, (c) black-coat D. d. dama, (d) common-coat D. d. dama. Source: (a) Dr. Rebecca Boger, EES, Brooklyn College CUNY, (b) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Antigua_and_Barbuda (c/d) Sandrine Grouard. the island. In fact, there is no recent literature from any Up to now, Dama International’s work has focused part of the Caribbean addressing the British introduc- on the fallow deer’s European diffusion and our results tion of Dama dama to the region. Tourism and academic suggest that there were two major episodes of translo- literature frequently state that fallow deer were introduced cation. The first coincided with the expansion of the ‘alongtimeago’, ‘probably from England’, ‘probably in the Roman Empire, which occurred between 27 BC and eighteenth century’ (Aspinall and Dash 1954;McComas AD 480 (Madgwick et al. 2013; Miller et al. 2016; 2013, 126). Even Chapman and Chapman’svolumeFal- Sykes et al. 2011) although many of the populations low Deer, widely acknowledged as the most comprehen- translocated and established during this period became sive survey of the species, repeats the idea that they were extinct within a few hundred years, including those ‘probably … imported sometime between 1700 and introduced to the islands of Britain (Sykes and Putman 1772’ (1975, 65). Masseti’s(2011)reviewofthehistorical 2014) and Mallorca (Valenzuela et al. 2016). The evidence suggests that the introduction