Do You Ever Find Pets?

Occasionally archaeologists do find pet burials. Unlike bones that are food remains, pet burials are found in purposely dug holes (instead of mixed up with kitchen trash), and the skeletons are “articulated”—that is, put together as the animal appeared in life.

If you look really carefully at the photo below, you can see an articulated dog skeleton. The head is at the left end of the pit (you are looking at the underside of his jaw), the vertebrae (or spine) runs along the top, and the pelvis (or hips) and lower legs are on the right side. There are also a lot of ribs showing up around the middle. This dog died and was buried in the 1800s, and was found by archaeologists behind the Peyton Randolph house in Colonial Williamsburg.

But would we really have to find a dog skeleton to know that a household had a dog? If you have a pet, think about your own house and yard. How would someone know that you owned a dog or cat or rabbit or fish even if the pet was not there? Are there objects in or around your house that would tell someone that you have a pet? How much information could someone get just by looking at those objects?

Archaeologists also find objects that tell us about pets owned by people living a long time ago. While pet burials are not common, archaeologists do frequently find evidence of pets on archaeological sites. Below you will see some examples of artifacts that an archaeologist might use to infer the presence of a dog on an archaeological site. In looking at these things, why might you want to be careful about saying that a dog definitely lived here? Can you think of other kinds of evidence for dogs—or other pets—who lived in the past?

Brick with paw print.

Brass dog collar.

This piece of a brass dog collar, found at the Geddy Site in Colonial Williamsburg, appears to read “JASPer.” While it is tempting to assume that the collar was worn by a dog of that name (as in, “Jasper, the dog”), a city ordinance of 1772 stated that no dog in Williamsburg could be kept “without a Collar worn about his Neck, whereon the initial Letters of the Owner’s Christian and Surname shall be marked.” In other words, the dog who wore this collar probably belonged to a man by the name of James (abbreviated JAS.) Perry, or Person, or another last name starting with the letters “Per.”

Sometimes the evidence of animals, and especially pets, is more subtle. In the pictures below you will see a cow bone that was probably tossed in the yard with the rest of the day’s trash. On first glance, it may not look so unusual to you, but an eagle-eyed zooarchaeologist (that’s someone who studies bones from archaeological sites) would notice that the edges of this bone have been gnawed by a dog.

Cow tibia (upper leg) bone with dog gnaw marks.

Same bone from above.

Not all “gnawers” leave such delicate evidence. Look at the bone below. The animal that ate this one was probably a beaver or a woodchuck. Obviously it had much bigger, and more destructive teeth!

Rodent chewed bone.

This page was inspired by the program “You Don’t Have to Dig Up the Dog,” created by Tonia Deetz Rock of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Used by permission.

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