Do dingoes hold the key to understanding human behavioural change in ancient Australia?

Summary

Archaeological evidence suggests dingos were brought to Australia sometime during the mid-Holocene (c. 5,000-3,500 years ago). Their introduction coincides with significant changes in human behaviour, specifically in technology, settlement patterns and diet. While their relationship with Aboriginal people is commonly held to have been commensal, this interesting amalgamation of changes certainly begs the question of whether there may be a dingo ‘signature’ in the archaeological record. Zooarchaeological data from numerous sites across Australia suggests there was a shift in human diet around this time, with Aboriginal people favouring smaller animals in place of larger kangaroos. Previously, we drew on modern ecological studies of dingos and postulated that this change could be a result of human-dingo competition, whereby dingoes suppress kangaroo populations, thereby decreasing human encounter rates, and resulting in the exploitation of smaller bodied species. However, what if hunting with dingoes actually just increased the encounter rate with smaller bodied prey, rendering hunting of larger macropods unnecessary? This paper explores both possible explanations using a multi-disciplinary approach combining ethnography, zooarchaeology and ecology to understand early dingo-human relationships as a pivotal factor in changing human subsistence strategies.

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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