Sacrificing and Eating Dogs in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean World

Summary

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Walter Klippel and his former student Lynn Snyder published finds of butchered dog bones from the Dark Age site of Kavousi in Crete. Other researchers, both before and after that published work, noted such finds elsewhere in Greece as well as in Cyprus, and dating to a wide range of post-Neolithic periods. Butchered dog bones are also known from several Philistine sites in Israel. Here, we consider present a detailed discussion of a butchered, apparently sacrificed, puppy found at the site of Tel Miqne-Ekron in Israel. Finds of disarticulated dog bones bearing butchery marks at Philistine sites in Israel has led, alongside the sacrificed puppy, to discussions regarding the significance of this practice, possible ethnic implications or connections with other regions in the eastern Mediterranean.

Cite this Record

Sacrificing and Eating Dogs in the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean World. Haskel Greenfield, Justin Lev-Tov, Ann Killebrew, Annie Brown. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 443706)

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Spatial Coverage

min long: 34.277; min lat: 13.069 ; max long: 61.699; max lat: 42.94 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21436