Subsistence and Food Production Economies in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Florida.

Indigenous groups in the American South relied on local resources including adapted neo-tropical and regionally domesticated crops and native fauna. Arrival of missionaries and non-native animal species (chickens, pigs, and cattle) led to changing subsistence strategies and settlement patterns. The mission communities needed to be self-sustaining and generate surpluses to supply the capital of La Florida (St. Augustine). Zooarchaeological data from sites in La Florida show how mission communities adopted these animals into their subsistence systems. Data shows adoption of domesticates varied across the provinces, and some food items became profitable market commodities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]