Jamestown residents likely turned to Indigenous dogs as a food source several times during the first 10 years of their Virginia colonization, according to a new study in American Antiquity. They also examined how Indigenous dogs disappeared over the next 400 years.
“The consumption of dogs suggests that Jamestown residents faced multiple periods of severe famine during the site’s early occupation, as well as later periods,” the paper said. “While the consumption of dog flesh in modern Western societies is considered taboo, there is a long history of eating dogs during periods of stress in England and other parts of Europe.” There is also evidence that the colony suffered from drought.
