Zooarchaeology entails the study of both microscopic chemical compounds and macroscopic societies and cultures. Its ability to see large through small is perfectly exemplified by the study of Anyang mortuary puppies. Located in the Central Plains of China (Figure 1), the city houses the remains of mortuary puppies from the Bronze Age, circa 1250 to 1050 BCE. Defying the norm of ancient Chinese dog burials, the sacrificed juvenile dogs provoke examinations of the social, cultural, and economic context of the settlement.
Figure 1. Map of China’s Central Plains, including Anyang. From Li & Campbell (2019).
Anyang’s neighboring Bronze Age cultural regions rarely carry bone remains of dogs less than six months of age. Most lived for 12 to 18 months, fulfilling an ideal age and death pattern for meat production, as it yields maximized animal size. However, Anyang differs (Figure 2). Among the 84 dog remains discovered in the Xiaomintou tomb, 37% lived less than six months and 73% less than one year (Li & Campbell 2019:169). This suggests that these dogs were not killed for consumption; their uniformly premature death also negates the claim that they were buried sentimentally as pets. It raises two big questions: one of their origins, another of their early demise.
Figure 2. “Waist pit” dog interments in Dasikongcun tomb, Anyang. Photo from Institute of Archaeology, 2014, vol. 2, pp. 2, plate 39.
Li and Campbell (2019:169) suggest that Anyang’s Bronze Age society may have a specialized compartment that supplies juvenile dogs for ritual purposes. According to them, the local mortuary practice of pairing the deceased with puppies would require an adult dog population of over 500 year-round. Moreover, surviving oracle-bone inscriptions document the governmental procurement of hundreds of dogs in a short time for royal rituals. This implies a somewhat professional dog economy, where canine husbandry and distribution were mature enough to support the local population and official events of massive scale.
The authors endorse two theories regarding the dogs’ young age. They propose that juvenile may be chosen because a shorter life span equates less sentimental attachment from humans. Though it contains referential value, this theory borders on ethnocentrism, since viewing puppies as cute pets of emotional attachment is a modern Western interpretation, and the emotional appeal of juvenile dogs is contingent upon local Anyang ontologies. Another practical explanation stands: sacrificing juvenile puppies rather than dogs reared to maturity is more economic. This links the dogs to locally abundant miniature, unfinished, and fake grave goods, suggesting the Anyang society’s cession of material, economic capital to symbolic capital.
Although the Anyang burial sites supply only ecofacts, they solicit conversations of much grander scales relating to the society, culture, and economy. By virtue of their taxon and age, the bone remains invite investigations of the larger background that created and disposed of them. Beyond the anthrosphere, they shed light on temporally removed human-animal relationships. The Anyang mortuary puppies, among with other Bronze Age dog burials, illuminate a fluid, spectral construct of animality, ranging from the lowest and inanimate as food and the highest and potent as pseudo-human companions. Beyond the juvenile bone remains, beyond the Bronze Age, such range of human-animal interconnections continue to this day.
Works Cited
Li, Zhipeng, and Roderick Campbell.
2019 Puppies for the Ancestors: The many roles of Shang dogs. Archaeological
Research in Asia, vol. 17, pp. 161-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2018.12.001.
Further Readings
Savino di Lernia, Mary Anne Tafuri, Marina Gallinaro, Francesca Alhaique, Marie Balasse, Lucia Cavorsi, Paul D. Fullagar, Anna Maria Mercuri, Andrea Monaco, Alessandro Perego, and Andrea Zerboni.
2013 Inside the “African Cattle Complex”: Animal Burials in the Holocene Central
Sahara. Public Library of Science.
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=nysl_se_vassar&id=GALE%7CA478204144&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon
Thomas Cucchi, Lingling Dai, Marie Balasse, Chunqing Zhao, Jiangtao Gao, Yaowu Hu, Jing Yuan, and Jean-Denis Vigne.
2016 Social Complexification and Pig (Sus scrofa) Husbandry in Ancient China: A
Combined Geometric Morphometric and Isotopic Approach. Public Library of
Science.
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&u=nysl_se_vassar&id=GALE%7CA457195751&v=2.1&it=r&sid=summon
I like that you analyze these burials for what insights they can provide into the social, cultural, and economic contexts of Anyang. I think its interesting that they were puppies when they died. I wonder, are puppies significant in the history of any other places in China? What about other places in the world? Why do you think this city specifically had such a large amount of puppies in its burial record?
For the Chinese, dogs were actually one of their earliest domesticated animals along with pigs (Mark). They were used in hunting, as companions, as food, and in sacrifices. Apart from being used in sacrifices in Anyang, dogs were made into jade amulets in Liangzhu Culture in Eastern China around 3400 to 2250 BCE, which were presumably used as grave goods to protect and guide the deceased. It is unclear whether the amulets represented dogs of a specific age range.
Dogs were important across many cultures in the ancient world, including Mesopotamia, Persia, India, Egypt, where they were associated with divinity. As for juvenile dogs, their specific roles are unclear. In modern-day Israel, a puppy was discovered to be buried with an old man approximately 12,000 years ago.
Dogs were also important to ancient Greeks and Romans, who saw them as companions and guardians of homes, and created art works that featured puppies.
As mentioned in the post, because of the city’s cultural inclination towards miniatures as grave goods, they may prefer puppies over grown dogs as burial companions (Li and Campbell). Also, the city apparently has a well-established system through which to procure mass amounts of dogs. Both could’ve contributed to the large amount of puppies buried.
Works Cited
Li, Zhipeng, and Roderick Campbell.
2019 Puppies for the Ancestors: The many roles of Shang dogs. Archaeological
Research in Asia Volume(17):161-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2018.12.001.
Mark, Joshua J.
2019 Dogs in the Ancient World. Ancient History Encyclopedia. https://www.ancient.eu/article/184/.
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