People with Animals by Broderick Lee;

Author:Broderick, Lee;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SCIENCE / Life Sciences / Zoology / General
Publisher: Oxbow Books, Limited
Published: 2016-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

6

CANIS PASTORALIS AND MAREMMANO-ABRUZZESE: ZOOARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC PARALLELS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN LIVESTOCK GUARDIAN DOGS

Elan N. Love

The domestic dog remains from a late 4th to early 1st century BC site in central Italy are exceptionally large and robust for the region and period. In multiple cases they also exhibit an unusual hereditary dental abnormality. This suggests that these individuals were from a selected and genetically isolated population. These are particularly interesting findings given the historical and economic context of the site at Monte Pallano, being situated in an important region for ancient and modern transhumant pastoralism and encompassing a period of great sociocultural change. Roman literature describes a specific type of livestock guardian dog as being developed in Italy around this time; descriptions very closely resemble the livestock guardian dogs employed today in that area, and at least six modern breeds of very similar appearance serve the same function across Europe and the Near East. There is some evidence that the Monte Pallano dogs may represent an ancestral type of one or more of these modern breeds, or may indicate the independent development of a type of dog similar in form and function to modern livestock guardian dogs. Future biometric and genetic research, alongside more consistent recording and publishing of dental abnormalities, could potentially shed light on the link between ancient and modern dogs and on the development of this particular human-animal interrelationship.

Introduction: the Monte Pallano assemblage and its dogs

Excavations from the late 1990s through early 2000s at the Iron Age and early Roman site at Monte Pallano (Province of Chieti, Italy) have produced faunal material from the 4th century BC through the 2nd century AD (Love, 2008). Most of the assemblage (632 specimens out of 894 total identified mammalian specimens) dates to c. 300–100 BC. Most of this ‘pre-Roman’ assemblage is comprised of cattle (Bos primigenius), caprines (Ovis aries or Capra hircus), and pigs (Sus scrofa domestica), with 54 fragments (8.5%) identified as dog (Canis familiaris). The sample was mainly collected by hand, with the number of small bones and fragments suggesting relatively little recovery bias. Taphonomic factors led to the recovery of very few postcranial dog elements complete enough to provide biometric data, but dental and cranial elements have provided enough biometric data to indicate a highly unusual morphology as well as an apparently unusual prevalence of a particular dental pathology (Love, 2008).

A set of four mandibles, all definitively from separate individuals, provided a full tooth row length measurement and a ramus height measurement.1 In the context of a sample of other dogs from pre-Roman and Roman Italy (De Grossi Mazzorin and Tagliacozzo, 2000), three of the four mandibles appear exceptionally large (Fig. 6.1). This is the case even for the later Roman period, when a greater range in dog sizes has been observed compared to earlier periods (Love, 2008). Of the reference sample of 70 dog mandibles from Bronze Age to late Roman Italy, only three (4.2%) had a height of over 25 mm and only five (7.

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