| This project examines the long, complicated relationship between humans and domestic animals in southeastern North America. More specifically, it examines the tightly interwoven evolutionary histories of humans, dogs, pigs, and horses in the region south of the Potomac River and east of the Appalachian Mountains (present-day Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida). The relationship between humans and domestic animals has changed, sometimes drastically, during every single era of southern history, and those changes have had profound evolutionary consequences for all parties involved. As society and culture have changed, the selective pressures that shape domestic populations have also changed. Invariably, some creatures have remained subject to direct anthropogenic selection, while others have not. Those animals who establish residency in the wild, free from direct anthropogenic influence, are technically neither domestic nor wild, and are instead relabeled feral. If we really want to understand humanity's historical relationship with domestic animals, then we cannot simply ignore the ones who went feral. This is especially true in southeastern North America, where social norms have long promoted ferality and where the continent's largest and most diverse collection of feral animals currently resides. This project is particularly interested in the factors that have influenced the genetic composition and biogeographic distribution of domestic and feral populations over the years. This method of analysis not only provides one with a new way of understanding southern history, but also allows one to draw broader inferences about present and future conditions. The evidence reveals that southerners, like all Americans, have grown increasingly divorced from the rest of nature, and that the trend is accelerating. |
