Archaic Rituals: Rebalancing with Dogs (original) (raw)
The Dogs of Spirit Hill An Analysis of Domestic Dog Burials from Jackson County, Alabama
The Spirit Hill site is located in northeastern Alabama and dates from the late Middle Woodland through the Mississippian prehistoric periods. The site includes the remains of house structures, storage pits, and hearths. In addition, the site has an adjacent cemetery that includes 284 human burials and 29 dog burials. We focus on the dog burials excavated from the site and identify the sex, age, burial context, and pathologies of the canine remains. Given the close association of dogs and humans at death, we also attempt to use the information from the Spirit Hill site to broaden our understanding of the roles dogs played in the lives of humans.
2023
The following paper focuses on the results of the archaeological research carried out by the University of Salento in Vaste (Southern Apulia). In the very centre of this ancient settlement, a holy place was set up between the 4 th and 3 rd centuries BC: three cavities contained the remains of rituals involving the sacrifice of domestic animals with subsequent slaughter, cooking, and collective banquets. Even five dogs were sacrificed, although they were neither slaughtered nor consumed. Ancient authors report that bloody dog rituals were associated with the different aspects of religious behaviour based on the particular value attributed to this animal; this value was often ambiguous, since the dog was associated with many gods and considered impure and unclean. It is possible to identify the use of this rite in several contexts of the Italian peninsula between the Iron Age and Romanization, in which similar acts were clearly distinguished in the stratigraphy and interpreted as "abandonment" or "closing rituals": the remains of the dogs lay above the layers of votive deposits or in contact with the destruction and abandonment layers. An analysis of the ritual and an explanation of its diffusion, together with an exegesis of the literary sources, can be framed in a research perspective that includes the anthropology of the ritual. It emerges that human alimentary behaviours, even prohibitions in the case of dogs, provide a key to understanding the ritual attitude towards animals; these behaviours are inscribed in the relationship of perpetual tension between the feelings of affinity and distinction, between human society and animal species.