Puppy Sacrifice and Cynophagy from Early Philistine Tel Miqne-Ekron Contextualized

Abstract

The discovery of a sacrificed puppy at Tel Miqne-Ekron, a major Philistine settlement in Israel's southern coastal plain, highlights the role of dogs in Iron I Philistia. Though dog sacrifice is described in Hittite religious texts and attested in lands bordering the Aegean during the second–first millennia BCE, evidence for this practice, or even of dog bones, is largely absent from Late Bronze and non-Philistine Iron I (ca. 1550–1000 BCE) Levantine contexts. What distinguishes the Tel Miqne-Ekron puppy interment from later Persian- and Hellenistic-period dog burials, is the placement of its severed head between its hind legs. Microscopic analyses of cut marks on several vertebrae indicate that the iron knife found nearby was likely used in its decapitation. This article examines the Tel Miqne-Ekron puppy burial within its eastern Mediterranean milieu and explores the ritual role of dogs and cynophagy (dog-eating) in second–first millennia society.

Macroscopic Chop Mark Identification on Archaeological Bone: An Experimental Study of Chipped Stone, Ground Stone, Copper, and Bronze Axe Heads on Bone

“…This analysis is part of our long-term effort to identify the nature of butchering tools in zooarchaeological assemblages during this crucial period when bronze metallurgy appeared [7,[9][10][11]16,[38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. Our experimental results are used to differentiate and identify the type of chopping instruments used at the site of Göltepe from central Turkey, at the dawn of the Bronze Age.…”

The Iron Age Dogs from Alaybeyi Höyük, Eastern Anatolia

“…Together with their roles as companions, hunting assistants, or guardians of the herds [ 46 ], dogs are often raised for food, sources of meat in crisis times, specific rituals, or medicinal purposes [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Puppy sacrifice was in practice in Anatolia during the Bronze Age, and both sacrifice of the dogs and cynophagy is known from Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean [ 21 , 40 , 49 , 50 , 51 ]. Particularly, dog remains found in cooking pots from the Iron Age stratum of the Sardis on the Aegean coast of Western Anatolia were interpreted as sacrificial meals [ 51 ].…”

“…Particularly, dog remains found in cooking pots from the Iron Age stratum of the Sardis on the Aegean coast of Western Anatolia were interpreted as sacrificial meals [ 51 ]. Dog bones with cut marks from the Early–Middle Iron Age stratum of Tel Miqne-Ekron in Palestine [ 49 ] and Ashkelon in Israel [ 50 ] were also described as evidence of cynophagy, sacrificial use, and the sacred status of dogs. At Alaybeyi Höyük, the distribution of dog bones was often associated with ungulate bones deposited as food residues, indicating that dog bones too might have a similar function.…”

Canine Economies of the Ancient Near East and Eastern Mediterranean

“…Zooarchaeologists work under the implicit assumption that, unless proven otherwise by unambiguous evidence (e.g., cutmarks), cynophagy was rare or non-existent in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. Despite a growing awareness of past dog consumption, especially in the Aegean and Iron Age Levant (Snyder and Klippel 2003;Maher 2017;Lev-Tov et al 2018)-and even though, as a general rule, zooarchaeologists are not surprised to find evidence of cynophagy or dog skinning-dog bones are typically not tallied among lists of livestock species in zooarchaeological reports. Even when zooarchaeologists find clear indications of dog butchery, dogs are generally excluded from synthetic treatments of ancient foodways and are often lumped together among "other" taxa in reports and regional summaries, a trend noted by Russell (2020).…”

“…Archaeologists working in the Near East and Mediterranean region, who predominantly come from European, American, and Middle Eastern cultures (all of which harbor taboos on cynophagy and often the use of canine skins), have little difficulty imagining ancient living dogs inhabiting roles as pets, hunting companions, faithful guardians, or even semi-feral pariah animals. Although there has been considerable treatment of cases of dog sacrifice (e.g., Clutton-Brock 1989;Blau and Beech 1999;Lev-Tov et al 2018), sometimes in ways that feed into existing Western narratives about the special emotional bond between humans and canines, there exists a tendency to downplay the ample faunal evidence that, in death, canines and their primary products played important roles in ancient economies in the region.…”