Dogs in the Archaeological Record

DOCUMENT Citation Only Victoria Monagle.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeologists frequently use single archaeological events to infer the entirety of the human-dog relationship in a particular time and place. While this practice makes sense given the limited sample of archaeological canids, it can lead to a one-dimensional understanding of how these two species interacted. The American Southwest, an arid region with a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Abigail Fisher. Kelsey Witt.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transition to agriculture in the Great Plains of North America is generally assumed to have occurred through processes of migration and diffusion. But understanding the nuance of this transition at local and subregional scales requires a focus on different types of social interactions and community-level decision-making. One method is to use dogs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Perri.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Advances in the isolation and sequencing of ancient DNA have begun to reveal the population histories of both people and dogs. Over the last 10,000 years, the genetic signatures of ancient dog remains have been linked with known human dispersals in regions such as the Arctic and the remote Pacific. It is suspected, however, that this relationship has a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Martin Welker. Edward Jolie. Sandra Koch. Amanda Semanko.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The domestic dog (Canis familiaris) was adapted to numerous roles in the past, including providing fiber for textile production. The coast Salish blankets of the Pacific Northwest are the best-known, and best-studied, examples, but dog hair textiles were also produced by indigenous groups in the Southwest, South America, and New Zealand. We examined...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Weronika Tomczyk. Claire Ebert.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The widespread perception of the dog as humans’ closest companion species allows their remains to be used as proxies for human diet and mobility patterns. But these highly social animals held their own variable social and economic roles. Therefore, dog remains can provide information on the organization of animal management systems in past complex...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amanda Burtt. Larisa DeSantis.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Angel site (12VG1) is located in southern Indiana, USA, on the Ohio River, and was occupied from approximately 1100 to 1450 CE. This site is part of a larger Mississippian cultural landscape. Research presented in this paper employs two methods for investigating the dietary behavior of domestic dogs recovered from the Angel site. Both dental...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Audrey Lin. Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa. Christina Stantis. Hsiao-Lei Liu. Logan Kistler.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to European colonization, Indigenous Coast Salish peoples in the Pacific Northwest traditionally raised a long-haired domestic dog breed to harvest its hair for weaving. The decline of dog-hair weaving has been attributed to the introduction of machine-made blankets by British and American trading companies in the early nineteenth century, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Cramb. Carla Hadden.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnohistoric accounts suggest people treated dogs differently across Oceania at the time of European contact. European accounts often state that the dogs of Oceania were fed plant foods such as breadfruit, coconut, yams, and taro. Some sources also reference dogs eating fish or taking on the roles of scavengers and hunters. Collectively these accounts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katie Dierks. Dylan Hillis. Denis St. Claire. Iain McKechnie.

This is an abstract from the "Dogs in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The wool dog is a precontact breed of domesticated dog that has held specific cultural importance within Indigenous communities on the coast of British Columbia and Washington for thousands of years. Although wool dogs no longer persist as a distinct breed on the Northwest Coast, information about these dogs is retained in ethnohistorical records and...