Cattle (Bos taurus) as colonists in South Carolina’s Lowcountry (USA), CE 1670–1900

•Cattle in the Carolina colony (USA) were small and remained small into the 1800s.•Carolina cattle derived from Spanish and British stock and pre-date modern breeds.•Cattle contributed to environmental, economic, and social changes in the colony.•Cattle altered the landscape, contaminated soils, degraded wetlands, and overgrazed.•African cattle hunters contributed to the development of rice as an export commodity. In 1994, Barbara Ruff and Elizabeth Reitz published a morphometric study of archaeological cattle (Bos taurus) remains from Hispaniola and the North American Atlantic coast spanning the 16th- through the mid-19th centuries. Their study found that early Spanish cattle, particularly those on Hispaniola, were larger than cattle in British-sponsored colonies on the Atlantic coast. Subsequent archaeological research enables a detailed diachronic study of cattle size using measurements of archaeological specimens deposited between CE 1670 and the late 1800s in Charleston (South Carolina, USA) and rural Lowcountry production centers. These new data support the earlier conclusion that most cattle in the Lowcountry were small and remained so into the 1800s. The phenotype suggested by these measurements likely reflects genetic potential, environmental conditions, management practices, and disease. These small, regional colonists contributed to substantial economic, environmental, and social changes.