Possible Evidence of Domestic Dog in a Paleoeskimo Context

Ethnographically-documented uses for domestic dogs (Canis familiaris) in northern societies include: drawing sleds, packing loads, locating breathing holes maintained by seals in the sea ice, holding muskoxen in their static defensive formation during the hunt, warning of camp intruders, and serving as a source of fur and food. Accordingly, domestic dogs played a significant role in the adaptive strategies of most historic Inuit and their archaeological predecessors, the Neoeskimo. Although the earlier Paleoeskimo cultures occupied the same environment and exploited many of the same resources as the historic Inuit, there is only sporadic evidence for domestic dogs in Paleoeskimo contexts. There appears to be little doubt that some of the Canidae remains from the Ipiutak site at Point Hope, Alaska, are those of domestic dog (Murie, 1948). However, the significance of the Point Hope finds is obscured since the Paleoeskimo Ipiutak culture, which appears early in the Christian Era (Rainey and Ralph, 1959), may have been a recipient of traits from Neoeskimo cultures which were beginning to establish themselves on the Bering and Chukchi Sea coasts at about the same time (Larsen and Rainey, 1948). It is conceivable that the new traits included the use of dogs, possibly of Siberian origin. Meldgaard (1962) has inferred the presence of domestic dog earlier in a Paleoeskimo Pre-Dorset component at Igloolik, N.W.T., but recently that interpretation has been challenged. According to Maxwell (1976), the earliest acceptable evidence for a domestic form of Canidae in a Paleoeskimo context in the eastern arctic occurs at the Dorset Nanook site on southern Baffin Island. The Nanook site appears to date no earlier than the first or second century A.D. (Maxwell, 1973:287), roughly contemporary with Point Hope Ipiutak. Canid skulls displaying cut or snapped canines and/or ossified subperiosteal hematomae due to beatings are good indicators that domestic dogs are represented, although these modifications are the result of cultural practices which are subject to variation. Biological criteria for identifying domestic dogs include a shortening of the rostrum, with resultant dental crowding (Clutton-Brock, 1969:305). However, archaeological reconstructions based strictly upon the latter attributes may be biased since tamed wolves would not be recognized as such, and even the hybrid offspring of dog-wolf matings might go unrecognized until the normal range of variation within the hypothetical parental populations is established as a basis for comparison. Skeletal evidence of a different sort obtained from the Lagoon site (OjR1-3) on Banks Island, N.W.T. (Arnold, 1978), supports the presence of domestic