Using Dental Microwear to Understand the Dietary Behavior of Domestic Dogs in Precontact North America

Research presented here employs Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA) to better understand food sharing among people and dogs in the Late Precontact Northwestern Plains and Midwest. DMTA is used to examine a specific tooth on the mandible of curated dog skeletons at two archaeological repositories. Dogs in the past are often described as strictly scavengers, while this project defines scavenging behaviors of domestic dogs in two more descriptive categories that can be used to better understand human-canine food sharing. The categories are provisioned consumers, dogs either fed or allowed to scavenge successfully, and non-provisioned scavengers, dogs not scavenging successfully and exhibiting signs of food stress. These categories are assigned based on known dietary behavior ecologies of coyotes and wolves (the domestic dog’s two closest relatives). This analysis shows that nuanced feeding strategies can be observed based on dental microwear features on the teeth of domestic dogs.