Taboo to Chew: Cultural Influences on Dog-Feeding

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Animal Bones to Human Behavior" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dog-feeding strategies employed by Indigenous North Americans vary across place and time. Human restrictions on prey animal parts given to dogs have been recorded in the ethnohistoric record. Dog feeding taboos are transcultural and often speak to ideas of a dog’s place among other animals and the influence dogs may have on the predator-prey relationship in hunting events. Restrictions humans placed on food sharing with their dogs range from mild apprehension to elaborate rituals, with the goal of keeping balance in the natural world, especially between the domestic and wild, the owned and unowned. This paper uses multiple lines of evidence including archaeological faunal remains, dental microwear, animal iconography, and ethnohistoric records to investigate food sharing and feeding restrictions between humans and their dogs. Investigating taboos associated with dog feeding provides a more contextualized understanding of dog-keeping in the past. Research presented will illuminate intentional human provisioning strategies of a companion species and contribute to anthropological knowledge of the dynamic ways the natural world has been conceptualized in the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Animal Bones to Human Behavior   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32372