Dog Burials and Healed Cranial Lesions: Exploring the Human-Dog Bond in the American Southwest

Summary

Since the initial domestication of the dog, humans and their canid companions have maintained a close connection. Dogs have been employed as hunters, beasts of burden, mousers, refuse disposers, ritual guardians, and emotional support. Also, given their physical size and profile, dogs have often been considered an animal underfoot. Despite dogs’ myriad working conditions, zooarchaeological research illustrates a non-random pattern of cranial lesions to prehistoric domesticated dogs from many sites around the world. In consideration of this, the authors studied over 50 dog burials from the Museum of Northern Arizona’s curated faunal collection. Skeletal material from the dog burials were examined for age, sex, size, burial orientation, mortuary context, and skeletal pathologies. In this poster, we address the results from these examinations with specific focus on the cranial lesions and explore the possibility that the human-dog relationship led to these injuries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage