A canine surrogacy approach to human paleodietary bone chemistry: past development and future directions
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ORIGINAL PAPER
A canine surrogacy approach to human paleodietary bone chemistry: past development and future directions Eric J. Guiry
Received: 8 March 2012 / Accepted: 14 March 2013 / Published online: 27 March 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract When archaeological human remains are absent or otherwise unavailable for bone chemistry-based paleodietary reconstructions, dog remains may provide an appropriate surrogate material for approximating ancient human diet. This “canine surrogacy approach” (CSA) has developed over the past thirty years and is becoming more common in archaeological science literature. A dearth of continued innovation in CSA applications as well as recent criticisms of its feasibility may reflect the absence of a cohesive overview of the approach’s development, its underlying analogical nature, as well as variation and inconsistency in the ways it has been applied. Considering the CSA’s invaluable potential to partially circumvent the destructive analysis of human remains, thereby addressing the increasingly recognized concerns of indigenous groups, such considerations would be timely and germane. Recent research has characterized the role of analogy in CSA applications and devised a framework for making CSA interpretations (Guiry J Archaeol Method Theory 19(3) :351–376, 2012a, b). In contrast to, and complementing that work, this paper provides an outline of the CSA’s inception and evolution with particular emphasis on identifying the impetuses for, and trends in, its development. In addition to clarifying the CSA’s origin as well as where and why it is applied today, this review provides an opportunity to identify future directions for productive methodological innovation. Keywords Dogs . Paleodiet . Bone chemistry . Stable isotope . Human proxy
E. J. Guiry (*) Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1, Canada e-mail: [email protected] E. J. Guiry Archaeology Program, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia
Introduction Reconstructing dietary regimes is one way through which archaeologists understand ancient human lifeways. Stable isotope analyses have been established as an effective method for reconstructing ancient diet (Katzenberg 2008). Stable isotope-based paleodietary reconstructions are founded on the premise that “you are what you eat,” and that different kinds of foods have distinguishable isotopic compositions. With this foundational knowledge, archaeological bone chemists study stable carbon and nitrogen isotope compositions preserved in ancient human tissues to understand past dietary trends. This form of paleodietary reconstruction is important as it is one of few ways in which archaeologists can obtain direct information on past human dietary and nutritional practices. Though highly valuable, stable isotope work is destructive. For this reason, in some parts of the world, isotopic analysis has led to concerns among various academic, non-academic and indigenous communities regarding the ethical treatment of a
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