Friends in High Places. An Integrated Examination of the Long-Term Relationship between Humans and Dogs in Arctic Prehistory

Summary

Dogs are arguably the most significant domestic species in the circumpolar North, in both their universal importance to life-ways and their near-uniqueness as a regional domesticate. The Arctic was the gateway for at least 4 independent waves of migration of dogs into the Americas, beginning as early as ~17,500-13,000 years ago, making this region particularly important for investigating not only the cultural and technological functions of Arctic dogs, but also the impact of successive introductions in the past 1,000 years on the high-latitude adaptations of prehistoric Arctic human populations.

This paper will focus on the integrated use of genetics, GMM and isotopes to reconstruct individual and population life-histories of prehistoric Arctic domestic dogs. This combination of interrelated analyses allows for a comprehensive investigation into genetic, morphological and dietary variability for the identification of domesticates from archaeological assemblages, and for examining the relationship between domesticates and wild canids in archaeological contexts. Our results demonstrate that this three-strand analytical investigation can shed new light on continuity and change in human-canid relationships during these periods of migration, providing valuable information about the relationship between humans and animals in prehistory, and the complex cultural and technological diffusions of successive human migrations across the Arctic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20618