Background/Question/Methods: For more than four decades, the standardized measurement of individual osteometric traits has constituted a central tool of the zooarchaeological analysis. The Guide to the measurement of animal bone from archaeological sites published in 1976 by Angela von den Driesch marked a turning point in the standardizing of these traits and represents nowadays a norm used by most zooarchaeologists worldwide. More recently, geometric morphometrics (GMM) have been introduced in the methodological arsenal of zooarchaeology. Given the subject matter of zooarchaeology, namely the analysis of animals in their human environment over time and space, these two instruments have been used to address a wide variety of issues: from the morphological changes of domesticated animals to evolutions of size and shape under the influence of other environmental pressures. Results/Conclusions: The research introduced here deals with the introduction of Eurasian domestic animals in the Americas at the onset of the European colonization of the continent during the 16th and 17th centuries. Before that event, the indigenous populations of North and Central America did not have access to a wide array of domestic animals. More specifically, this work focuses on the role played by bovine cattle in shaping broad aspects of the emergent colonial society, from land use to the social division of labor. Cattle shaped the social and cultural systems and the landscape, and the ecosystems in these different regions. Given its scope, this research analyzes biological traits as proxies to highlight cultural and social processes and their environmental consequences. In this case, the metric variations on individual bones are used to study the mode of management of the colonial herds, enabling us to make inferences on the potential impact of such practices on the local environments. In complement, geometric morphometrics are used to identify specific bovine populations and their origins to analyze the mobility and the itineraries of cattle in colonial Spanish America. Combining these approaches highlights how the innovative analysis of individual osteological traits analytical tools such as osteometrics and GMM can renew our perspective on the complex interactions between humans, animals, and the post-Columbian Americas environment.
