Hounds follow those who feed them: What can the ethnographic record of hunter-gatherers reveal about early human-canid partnerships?

Abstract

The establishment of early human-canid partnerships involving the use of dogs in hauling and/or hunting is often nominated as a process that underwrote technological, economic and demographic changes in prehistoric human populations. Inferences about the uses of prehistoric canids are bolstered by reference to ethnographic analogues. Archeologists, however, lack an inferential framework encompassing a systematic analysis of the ethnographic record that identifies the circumstances that support and constrain the use of canids. This paper presents comparative analyses of hunter-gatherer ethnographic records that show the importance of provisioning in supporting dogs engaged in energetically demanding activities. Canid thermoregulation in concert with work load intensity require significant investments provisioning dogs that can greatly inflate the subsistence efforts of hunter-gatherers. These data suggest that anthropogenic food refuse could not have established or supported an indigenous working dog population. Prehistoric human-dog interactions in colder biomes that involved the use of dogs working in haulage and/or hunting could only be supported after intentional provisioning regimes emerged and were incorporated into hunter-gatherer subsistence systems. The importance of human provisioning in the use of working dogs has implications for understanding the circumstances that supported the formation of early human-canid working relationships and the domestication process.