Long in the Horn: An Agricultural Anthropology of Livestock Improvement

This article explores the evolutionary history of P ineywoods cattle, an endangered breed of landrace cattle in the southeastern U nited S tates, including recent efforts by the P ineywoods C attle R egistry & B reeders A ssociation to conserve the remaining diversity within the population. The human dimension of the breed's development is important to both the history of selection within herds and the ongoing process of conservation. There exists a need for applied anthropology to engage with in situ animal genetic resource conservation because the sociality of livestock breeding necessarily involves both humans and livestock.