Canine Surrogacy Approach: Applications for Studying North American Pre-Colonial Diets

Abstract

Studying human diets through isotopic signatures can come with multiple challenges, primarily the availability and feasibility of utilizing human tissues, such as bone, teeth, hair, or coprolites. This may be due to preservation issues, the destructive nature of the analysis, ethics, or legislature. To mitigate these issues, it has become increasingly popular for researchers to utilize tissues from animals. In order for this method to be used successfully, an animal that would have consumed a diet similar to that of its human companions must be utilized. Due to the close relationship between humans and dogs in many past cultures worldwide, a method called the Canine Surrogacy Approach (CSA) has proved successful in many regions where dogs were known to have subsisted on human foods. This method is useful for colonized regions, as the archaeological remains of Indigenous people are often only subjected to bioarchaeological analysis if descendant groups grant explicit permission. This paper highlights and discusses the usefulness of this method in North America with reference to ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of dog provisioning. Three case studies are presented, which exhibit the applications of the CSA in different regions of the United States and Canada. Each case study approaches the CSA in different ways, showcasing the various applications of this method utilizing a variety of bioarchaeological remains. In closing, the usefulness of applying the CSA method in future studies of the dispersal of maize in the period before colonization in Canada is emphasized.