Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia

I've been thinking about Solzhenitsyn lately, so I decided to search for an article on rather old siberian burials (those were not my search terms, though they bring up interesting articles concerning similar material). I wanted to know about the burial of animals, for that is, as the authors suggest, rather overshadowed by anything else.

This article is about the burial of dogs and wolves in neolithic Siberia. Though many people don't realize that dogs are willful, sentient people too. I know, you are probably thinking "Nonsense, dogs are obviously people. They bring you gifts and get revenge!" The sad truth is, this just doesn't seem to click with some people. (Not having animal friends as a child has been shown to lead to decreased levels of empathetic development (no reference but the literature is out there). Fortuntely, there are people like this to put things straight.

They took their data from a few rather large neolithic cemeteries located near rivers in Siberia. There were many human graves in the cemeteries included in the study and they had interesting burial traditions. Common themes were large oval pit, repeated grave additions, modified and unmodified animal parts (canids, ungulates, bears, etc.), ochre, and disarticulation. The dogs studies were in both graves of their own and in graves they shared with humans. While some dogs in their sample were treated with little regard (like strangers, perhaps?), some were treated as though they were one of the other people around. Burial goods and even one case of a fancy stone lined grave all to itself.

The most interesting case was that of a stranger wolf. This wolf, a rather old one missing teeth, was not showing evidence of living with the people of the area. Using stable isotope analysis, they determined that the wolf was eating a normal wolf diet (for the area. The opposite patterns would show in some places around here) of ungulates (for protein, that is) while the humans relied heavily on fish. A diet in fish leads to a higher ratio of heavy to normal nitrogen. The wolf was buried in a grave with the head of a human between his legs, near his belly. I say "his" because they were able to sex him in the fashion that can make a zooarchaeologist's job much easier, namely, finding of an os penis. Why can't every male have and extra bone for finding (that is actually a serious and much argued point)? The human's radio-carbon date differed from that of the wolf but the rest of the circumstance implied they were buried together. This, they argue, is due to old carbon contamination from the water around. Others
have suspected this water before.

As many dogs receive burials equivalent to contemporaneous humans, they conclude that these people realized that dogs are people too. The authors urge researchers to consider dogs in findings more seriously. They state that more studies of similar detail need to be done in the region. I say, similar focus must be employed everywhere for all animals, for all animals, except mosquitoes, are people too.


READ!:
Losey, R.J. et al., 2011. Canids as persons: Early Neolithic dog and wolf burials, Cis-Baikal, Siberia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 30(2), pp.174–189.