The use of tooth marks for new research into identifying and understanding the first domestic dogs in Palaeolithic populations

José Yravedra,Lloyd A Courtenay,Darío Herranz-Rodrigo,Pablo Aragón-Poza,Cecilia Mendoza

doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2021.103252

Abstract

The domestication of wolves is a topic of great interest. To date, the most accepted hypotheses associate this phenomenon to the end of the Upper Palaeolithic, while many propose an earlier date closer towards the Aurignacian. The latter proposal hinges on extensive research using palaeontological, morphometric, biomolecular-isotopic, genetic data and microwear contributing valuable information to the current debates. Nevertheless, few confront the theoretical reasoning behind this process, analysing the sociocultural implications that link humans with canids. Under this premise the current overview considers the motivation behind this process while proposing new lines of investigation that may help confront these questions across the indirect methods using new technologies applied study of tooth marks of the sites.

Highlights

The domestication of wolves is a phenomenon that has always generated great expectations and interest in both the general public and researchers (Benecke, 1987; Dark, 2003; Vigne, 2006; Germonpre et al, 2009; Shipman, 2015; Janssens et al, 2018).Mainly the debate on the domestication of wolves has focused attention on the when and where
Abundant documentation exists for domestic dogs in the euroasiatic archaeological register towards the end of the Upper Palaeolithic (Table 1), while important Magdalenian sites is known in Northern Iberia such Erralla (Vigne, 2006); France, Switzerland and Germany (Pionnier-Capitan et al, 2011), burials in Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany (Street, 2013; Morey, 2014; Janssens et al, 2018); the Middle East (Tchernov and Valla, 1997) and the Zhokov Island of Siberia (Pitulko and Kasparov, 2017)
Based on the aforementioned corpus of research in this field, the present study develops the state of the art that can help differentiate the tooth marks produced by wolves and dogs; utilising machine learning algorithms and geometric morphometrics for the identification of wolf and domestic dog bite damage

Summary

Introduction

The domestication of wolves is a phenomenon that has always generated great expectations and interest in both the general public and researchers (Benecke, 1987; Dark, 2003; Vigne, 2006; Germonpre et al, 2009; Shipman, 2015; Janssens et al, 2018).Mainly the debate on the domestication of wolves has focused attention on the when and where. The domestication of wolves is a phenomenon that has always generated great expectations and interest in both the general public and researchers (Benecke, 1987; Dark, 2003; Vigne, 2006; Germonpre et al, 2009; Shipman, 2015; Janssens et al, 2018). Numerous Mesolithic sites present data of interest for non-Palaeolithic contexts (Morey and Waint, 1992; Larson et al, 2012). Under this premise, most research tends to agree on the dog as being the first species to have been domesticated by humans in chronologies earlier than the Neolithic

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