Ground-truthing Historic European Accounts of Great Plains Indian Dog Husbandry with Stable Isotopes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Historic journals and early ethnographic accounts have the potential to inform on Native American cultural norms, including interaction with commensals, such as dogs. However, these accounts are imperfect due to biases couched in ethnocentrism and personal interests. This research seeks to test historic accounts related to dog husbandry, training, and diet, and explore the possibility of tracking these behaviors into the past using stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of canid remains from precontact Middle Missouri and Coalescent Tradition Plains Village sites in North Dakota. The combined nitrogen and carbon isotope data indicate early weaning, altered diets distinct from wild canids based largely on maize, and possibly care for sick and pregnant dogs as described in early European accounts at contact.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23620