Dogs as food in early America

Whether by habit, preference, or necessity, dogs have been a part of many cultures' diets... Excavations at the site of Porden Point, Devon Island, Canada, have revealed that the people of the Thule culture (ancestors of the modern Inuit) were using dogs both for work and food from the 12th to 15th centuries. The Aztecs, whose ancestors were called the Chichimec, or "Dog People," are known to have bred a hairless dog they called a Xoloitzcuintle to serve at royal feasts. And at Halliday, a site near Cahokia, the mound center north of modern-day St. Louis, which was the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico from A.D. 1050 to 1400, butchered dog bones have been found in great quantities, suggesting they formed a significant part of the diet of the Mississipian culture...

The study shows that that the Olmec dogs only ate maize, whereas humans ate a diverse range of foods. Perhaps the dogs were being deliberately fattened up to make them a more valuable form of tribute...

"Unlike in the Old World, where you have many different domesticated animals, in the New World, dogs are one of the only domestic animals that can provide a ready source of animal protein," says anthropologist Robert Rosenswig of the University at Albany...

Rosenswig believes there may have been a change in the use of dogs at approximately 1400 B.C. Prior to this, dogs were buried along with humans—one dog burial that he excavated at the Cuauhtémoc site about six miles from the Guatemalan border contained grave offerings similar to those in human burials, including a pot that looks like a dog's bowl. After this point, all known dog remains indicate that they were consumed as food, since the bones are only found in garbage middens, not in graves with people.

From the September/October issue of Archaeology, which has several more articles on the history of dogs and humans.