Archaeological and biometric perspectives on the development of chicken landraces in the Horn of Africa.

Domestic chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus L., 1758) were integrated into agricultural systems in the Horn of Africa as early as the pre‐Aksumite period (c. 2,500 years ago), after they were introduced from Asia through land and maritime trade and exchange. In this paper, we explore the development of chicken landraces in this region by examining continuity and change in chicken body size. Specifically, we compare the measurements of chicken bones dating from 800 BCE to 400 BCE from the pre‐Aksumite site of Mezber in northern Ethiopia, with those of modern chickens (of known age and sex) from northern Ethiopia and a population of known age and sex cross‐bred red junglefowl (Gallus gallus L., 1758), curated at the Natural History Museum at Tring (UK). Considered together, these datasets provide insight into African poultry development and offer the first metrical baselines of chickens with known history in the region. Thus, this study has the potential to underpin future studies of domestic fowl morphology in Africa.