Abstract
More than 5000 years old dog’s coprolite was found during rescue excavation at Crnelnik pile-dwelling site in Slovenia. Although human and dog diets may overlap considerably, the content of the consumed and digested food, consisting of plant and/or animal remains biologically diverse. While the investigated fossil excrement contained many fish head bones, scales and teeth of Cyprinidae family, we believe that we are dealing with an individual that had only eaten fish heads, that is why it was suggested to be of dog. Beside the origin and the daily diet of the individual together with the nutritional habits of the dog in the Late Neolithic, the analyses of coprolite provide more important information, for example: the time of year of the deposit, the environmental conditions there, the size and the health of the animal as well as care (or the status) of domesticated animal for humans. The discovery confirms again that animal dung should be an important part of archaeological investigations, specially at waterlogged sites.
Highlights
Archaeobotany and archaeozoology are important natural sciences that supplement archaeological investigations
Coprolites of Canis familiaris as well as of human are regularly reported in various archaeological contexts (Macphail, 2000; Ismail-Meyer & Rentzel, 2004 and etc.), but rarely as completely preserved specimens
We assume we are dealing with the coprolite of dog origin, because uncarbonised remains of fish heads of Cyprinids were mainly preserved (Figure 3)
Summary
Archaeobotany and archaeozoology are important natural sciences that supplement archaeological investigations. Both botany and zoology are closely connected to human activities. Nutrition supplies (for people and domesticated animals), as well as material for building activities or weapon and tool production are all connected with natural materials, both plant and animal. Archaeobiological material can be well preserved in waterlogged conditions where organic. Galik remains are often preserved in an uncarbonised state and in large amounts. Circum-Alpine prehistoric lake-shore settlements are typical such archaeological sites. The Ljubljansko barje region in Slovenia with more than 40 pile-dwelling sites from the 5th to the 2nd millennium cal BC (Velušček, 2004) is the most southeasterly region of those sites (Figure 1)
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