Dogs: oldest but neglected friends under scrutiny
A hairy 4,500-year-old face is thought to be the first such forensic reconstruction ever made of a Neolithic dog. An earlier portrayal of the animal whose skull was excavated in Orkney in 1901 had envisioned a fox terrier, but a new study suggests a larger dog looking more like a European grey wolf. Research by a team of scientists continues in what Alison Sheridan of National Museums Scotland describes as “an outstanding example of very fruitful interinstitutional collaboration”.
Dogs were apparently first domesticated by Palaeolithic huntergatherers around 40,000 years ago. Recent ancient dna research suggests modern European dogs share most of their ancestry with Neolithic predecessors, such as an example from the Newgrange passage tomb, the only prehistoric Irish dog yet examined for adna. Work underway by Greger Larsen at Oxford University would make the Orkney dog, found in a comparable but smaller tomb at Cuween Hill, the first from the uk to offer an ancient canine genome. The genetic history of dogs is complex and yet to be fully documented. Remains are common throughout prehistoric times, but how dogs interacted with people has been little considered.
The Cuween skull was laser-scanned at Edinburgh University’s Royal (Dick)
School of Veterinary Studies (the Dick Vet), and 3d-printed at Historic Environment Scotland’s Engine Shed in Stirling; a 3d photogrammetric model was made by Richard Allen at the University of Oxford. Amy Thornton, a forensic artist who studied at the Centre for Anatomy & Human Identification at the University of Dundee, used the 3d print to create the facial reconstruction. A second partial reconstruction has been prepared to take account of the adna study, which may prompt revisions to eye colour and fur colour and texture.
Robin Bendrey, a faunal osteologist at the University of Edinburgh, says that with other bones from Cuween the skull suggests a dog around the size of a large collie. Titziana Liuti ctscanned the skull in the Dick Vet’s Diagnostic Imaging Service. With these data Tobias Schwarz noted heavy tooth wear consistent with the dog having chewed many bones over its life of two or three years.
This observation fits with independent work on coprolites (ancient poo) from the Neolithic village of Skara Brae, Orkney, by Elsa Panciroli and Andrzej Romaniuk of Edinburgh University and National Museums Scotland. They have identified sizeable chunks of bone, indicating a canine diet that included sheep and Orkney voles.
The 1901 dig at Cuween reportedly found 24 dog skulls, though only one survives. Remains of many animals have been found at other Neolithic tombs in Orkney – eagles at Isbister and deer at Knowe of Yarso – and they were once thought to have been totems associated with the tombs’ builders. Radiocarbon dates, however, show in all cases that the animals are centuries less ancient than the tombs, which were made around 5,000 years ago.
The research was commissioned by Historic Environment Scotland, working closely with National Museums Scotland, to inform new visitor information panels at Cuween Hill.