Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Preamble to the Dog's Journey through Time
- 2 Immediate Ancestry
- 3 Evidence of Dog Domestication and Its Timing: Morphological and Contextual Indications
- 4 Domestication of Dogs and Other Organisms
- 5 The Roles of Dogs in Past Human Societies
- 6 Dogs of the Arctic, the Far North
- 7 The Burial of Dogs, and What Dog Burials Mean
- 8 Why the Social Bond between Dogs and People?
- 9 Other Human-like Capabilities of Dogs
- 10 Roles of Dogs in Recent Times
- Epilogue: One Dog's Journey
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- References
- Index
4 - Domestication of Dogs and Other Organisms
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Foreword
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 Preamble to the Dog's Journey through Time
- 2 Immediate Ancestry
- 3 Evidence of Dog Domestication and Its Timing: Morphological and Contextual Indications
- 4 Domestication of Dogs and Other Organisms
- 5 The Roles of Dogs in Past Human Societies
- 6 Dogs of the Arctic, the Far North
- 7 The Burial of Dogs, and What Dog Burials Mean
- 8 Why the Social Bond between Dogs and People?
- 9 Other Human-like Capabilities of Dogs
- 10 Roles of Dogs in Recent Times
- Epilogue: One Dog's Journey
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- References
- Index
Summary
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
In beginning a chapter that deals with the very process of domestication, it is important to establish its initial pretext. Specifically, for tactical purposes plants have a place in this treatment, simply because treatments of the domestication of both plants and animals are often bound, conceptually, by a common thread. That statement reflects my own primary background as an archaeologist, subjected to a genuine social science tradition of scholarship, in North American anthropology. Numerous passages from the literature clearly illustrate that conceptual framework. Because this is a volume about a particular domestic animal, it is useful to begin with several definitions, or characterizations, of animal domestication that have been offered over the years:
I would define the essence of domestication as: the capture and taming by man of animals of a species with particular behavioural characteristics, their removal from their natural living area and breeding community, and their maintenance under controlled breeding conditions for profit.
(Bökönyi 1969: 219)It seems reasonable to accept the fact that the events leading from animals that were wild to those that were finally domesticated would follow the process of capture, taming, and controlled breeding (but not necessarily conducted as a well-organized procedure).
(S. J. Olsen 1979: 175)Domestication consists of isolating animals belonging to a species having particular characteristics (certain species will not be domesticated) from their free communities and raising them under the control and to the benefit of man. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- DogsDomestication and the Development of a Social Bond, pp. 57 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010