Accessing whether an animal was domesticated or wild from its bones has been a persistent objective for archaeologists. There are three markers signifying the difference between domesticated pigs and wild boars, used as approaches to distinguish bones (teeth and the lower jaw in particular) found on sites and thereby to study the degree of agriculturalization of varies ancient civilizations.
First and foremost, since the Neolithic period, food for humans has eventually become more sophisticated. Due to agriculturalization, food preparation became a much more meticulous process: from threshing, raking, winnowing to cleaning, food particles were then much easier to take in (Renfew and Bahn 2018:193). Moreover, the domestication of plants has also made food more refined: with a settled living pattern, farmers cultivated a variety of plants, boosting the production while also ultimately altering their structures to adapt more properly to the then desired diet (Renfew and Bahn 2018:195). Given pigs often ate household scraps (Weber and Price 2015), their diet has also experienced such a change. Now that mastication was less vital than before, pigs’ jawbones eventually experienced a shrink from the lack of frequent, forceful use. However, although the bone structure narrowed during the taming process, the inherited teeth structural traits still remained. A result of this phenomenon would be less space for development (Yuan 2019), and thus unevenly or irregularly grown teeth (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Irregularly aligned teeth of a domesticated pig (Yuan 2019).
Secondly, LEH (Linear Enamel Hypoplasia) is a condition concerning transverse markings on tooth enamel, which are formed during the developmental stages of a tooth crown (Figure 2), often due to malnutrition and mental stress (Magnell and Carter 2007). Since boars foraged their food in the wild, a balanced diet tended to be more approachable, promising a variety of sustenance. Therefore, LEH has a much lower rate of occurrence on wild boars’ enamel. On the other hand, domesticated and thus fed by humans, pigs had a less varied diet. Namely, household left-overs primarily with rich starch content, such as barley or oat, were given to pigs. Above that, being kept in a restricted space, domesticated pigs were stressed out by the captivity, leading to a higher chance of suffering from LEH. Thus, domesticated pigs tend to have a high LEH occurrence rate (Yuan 2019).
Figure 2: LEH markings on tooth enamel (Magnell and Carter 2007).
Last but not least, dental calculus, marked by a “mineralized plaque that accumulates on the surface of a tooth” (Weber and Price 2015), is also a sign that differentiates a domesticated pig from a wild boar. As mentioned above, due to the emergence of a high-starch diet, domesticated pigs were more prone to getting such a condition. Interestingly, aside from being a tool for identification, this condition, typically spotted with micro-remains of starch granules, is also used to determine the ancient diet for domesticated pigs (Weber and Price 2015). For further readings on this topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15301863
To read more about dental variations between domestic and wild Sus scrofa: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4328033/
Images:
Figure 1:
Yuan, Jing
2019 The Story of Pigs. Electronic document,
https://archsci.fudan.edu.cn/84/8c/c16569a165004/page.htm, accessed September 28, 2019
Figure 2:
Magnell and R. Carter
2007 THE CHRONOLOGY OF TOOTH DEVELOPMENT IN WILD BOAR – A GUIDE TO AGE DETERMINATION OF LINEAR ENAMEL HYPOPLASIA IN PREHISTORIC AND MEDIEVAL PIGS. Electronic document,
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/191f/6c636c2403c2b87d92074985673494508c5e.pdf, accessed September 28, 2019.
References:
Renfew and P. Bahn
2018 Archaeology Essentials (Theories/Methods/Practice). 4th ed. Thames & Hudson, London.
Magnell and R. Carter
2007 THE CHRONOLOGY OF TOOTH DEVELOPMENT IN WILD BOAR – A GUIDE TO AGE DETERMINATION OF LINEAR ENAMEL HYPOPLASIA IN PREHISTORIC AND MEDIEVAL PIGS. Electronic document,
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/191f/6c636c2403c2b87d92074985673494508c5e.pdf, accessed September 28, 2019.
Weber and Max D. Price
2015 What the pig ate: A microbotanical study of pig dental calculus from 10th–3rd millennium BC northern Mesopotamia. Electronic document,
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X15301863, accessed September 28, 2019
Yuan, Jing
2019 The Story of Pigs. Electronic document,
https://archsci.fudan.edu.cn/84/8c/c16569a165004/page.htm, accessed September 28, 2019
Archaeology often studies the remains and things left behind by humans. How can an archaeology of other things — such as animals — help us better understand the past?
Aside from objects made, used and deposited by humans, other kinds of artifacts are also crucial for our understanding of the past. For instance, ecofacts — remains of nature. Both fauna and flora remains, also faecal material, could shed light on how the climate and/or the environment was/were like in the past, which would help archaeologists comprehend possible behaviors of ancient humans better, or to construct a more holistic picture of their daily lives. Among all ecofacts, microfauna and microflora are the best for reconstructing a past world, for their sensitivity towards climate changes could clearly indicate any alterations of the living conditions of past people. Moreover, if the remains are of farming and livestock domestication, not only could we see more clearly the process of agriculturalization, we could also deduce the diet of people in the past, the construct of meal, or their religious rituals (i.e. killing certain animals as sacrifice for deities), taking us one more step forward to understanding the past.