Previous work has applied SIA on dog remains to infer dog and human diets at specific sites and time periods. In light of this, SIA has been used on domestic dogs to infer human subsistence activities and for inferences into the role of humans in pre-industrial food webs 5, 11, 12. Given that SIA of human diet involves the destructive analysis of ancestral human remains, such research may not align with the interests of Indigenous peoples. Two of the most commonly analyzed isotopes include carbon ( δ 13C), which can be used to assess whether an animal’s protein is derived from marine or terrestrial sources 8, and nitrogen ( δ 15N) isotopes, which reflect trophic position 9 as well as extent of terrestrial vs marine consumption 10. Isotopic signatures can estimate diets among populations of the past via use of bone collagen and other preserved tissue of consumers and their foods. Stable isotope analysis (SIA) estimates the relative contribution of foods that comprise an organism’s diet and is a widely used method in ecology, archaeology, paleobiology, and forensics. One method by which researchers have generated insight into this relationship has been stable isotope analysis 6, 7. Given that dogs depended on human communities for provisioning and protection from predators such as wolves, it has been postulated that the diet of dogs can reflect human subsistence practices through provisioning as well as scavenging of human refuse 5. The skeletal remains of dogs, including purposeful interments, are regularly encountered in archaeological site deposits dating back to the earliest sites with preserved fauna 3, 4. Domestic dogs occur frequently in the early historic and oral historical accounts of the social and economic practices of Indigenous communities on the coast 2, 3. A less well recognized component of cultural practices in this region is the care and maintenance of domestic dog ( Canis familiaris) populations. These results are broadly consistent with the canine surrogacy model as well as help illuminate human participation in pre-industrial marine food webs and the long-term role of fisheries in Indigenous economies and lifeways.Īlthough Indigenous communities on the Northwest Coast of North America have been classically described as ‘hunter-gatherers’ or ‘fisher-hunter-gatherers’, they maintained disproportionately high population densities, extensive trade networks, and elaborate territorial and governance structures with a corresponding influence on coastal landscapes 1. We compared these isotopic data to dogs across the Northwest Coast, which indicated a pronounced marine diet for Tseshaht dogs and, presumably, their human providers. Two candidate models that best match zooarchaeological data indicate dogs predominantly consumed salmon and forage fish (35–65%), followed by nearshore fish (4–40%), and marine mammals (2–30%). Here, we use zooarchaeological data to develop and apply a Bayesian mixing model (MixSIAR) to estimate dietary composition from 14 domestic dogs and 13 potential prey taxa from four archaeological sites (2,900–300 BP) in Tseshaht First Nation territory on western Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. ![]() Previous research has used stable isotope analysis of dog diets for insight into human subsistence (‘canine surrogacy’ model) and identified considerable use of marine resources. ![]() Although dogs depended on human communities for care and provisioning, archaeologists lack information about the specific foods dogs consumed. ![]() ![]() Domestic dogs are frequently encountered in Indigenous archaeological sites on the Northwest Coast of North America.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |