Ancient Pets Got Proper Burials

A dog buried at the site of Pad’ Kalasnikova in Siberia. This dog was buried in a crouched or sitting position. (Credit: Losey RJ, Garvie-Lok S, Leonard JA, Katzenberg MA, Germonpre´ M, et al. (2013) Burying Dogs in Ancient Cis-Baikal, Siberia: Temporal Trends and Relationships with Human Diet and Subsistence Practices. PLoS ONE 8(5): e63740. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063740) As a kid, when my pet turtle died we had a funeral — of course — and buried him in the backyard. When the family dog passed, his remains were cremated and placed in an urn on the mantle. In today’s society, mortuary rites for animals are so common, Yelp has reviews of pet cemeteries (5 stars for Animal Aftercare. 4.5 for Pet Haven). While online ratings are new, concern for the animal afterlife is not a modern fad. “People were doing this thousands and thousands of years ago… it’s a long, long standing practice,” says archaeologist Robert Losey. Archaeologists have unearthed ancient pet burials dating as far back as 14,000 years, from the dawn of animal domestication. Although interred animals are relatively rare (when considering the full archaeological record of all human societies), they occur in at least some cultures and time periods on every continent except Antarctica. It’s fairly easy for archaeologists to identify a burial: Filled-in pits have loose, jumbled sediment, while surrounding earth is more compact and layered. Also, complete skeletons in proper alignment indicate burials; otherwise the bones would be scattered and fragmented. The real challenge is to understand the motivations behind these burials. Ancient people may have interred animals for the same reasons we do today: because they were beloved pets, members of the family worthy of memorial. Alternatively, animals could have been sacrificed as part of a larger ritual or just buried to get rid of rotting carcasses. Here’s how archaeologists have made cases for putative pet cemeteries.