Economic benefits of hunting dogs in the context of tropical horticulture

Summary

We provide evidence useful to ethnoarchaeological research on the behavioral coordination of hunting movements among humans and dogs. The domestication of dogs (~15000 y BP) is hypothesized to have benefited humans by increasing the food supply, saving human energy, and guarding camps or agricultural fields. Drawing on a year of fieldwork in Santa Cruz, Toledo District, Belize, we analyze the economics of hunting and the extent to which dogs could have helped humans to protect cultivated fields from mammalian pests. We observe when hunts were initiated and track hunting trips with wrist (humans) and collar (dog) GPS units in order to describe quantitatively the coordinated movements of humans and their dogs while hunting. We note the composition of hunting parties, the skills of dogs, hunting returns and the horticultural benefits of this practice. We comment generally on implications of our results for the co-evolution of humans and their canine companions.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Nose to Tail: An Interdisciplinary Look at Dogs in the Past   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage