Zooarchaeological analysis: The curious case of canid identification in North America

Abstract

Zooarchaeological identification often rests heavily on analysts’ opinion, experience, and access to reference specimens or manuals. A review of the literature reporting archaeological domestic dog remains demonstrates the danger of this approach. Domestic dogs have played, and continue to play, important roles in many human societies; however, they also exhibit strong skeletal similarities to wild canids -to the extent that post-cranial elements are often identified only as “canid”. Accessing these data is dependent upon the ability to correctly identify domestic dog remains. To accomplish this, zooarchaeologists rely on an array of often poorly tested methods, many developed to separate dogs from only their progenitor the grey wolf. Despite the potential and implications of misidentification, archaeologists frequently do not specify the methods used to identify dog remains rendering it impossible to assess data quality and reliability. The absence of data quality standards critically weakens zooarchaeological (and other) archaeological data, especially increasingly popular efforts to synthesize published data, and contribute to debates outside of the field.