Dogs as Part of the Social Fabric of Iron Age Settlements

Lidar Sapir-Hen and Dierdre Dixon Fulton wrote for ANE today about dogs in the Iron Age (end of 2nd millennium – first half of the 1st millennium BCE). Previous research has focused on their use in cultic activity, or viewed dogs as simply “unclean” or pariah animals. In their new joint study of the archaeological and textual evidence, they suggest that dogs functioned as herders, guards and occasionally hunters, and that dogs were actually an important part of Levantine communities.

For ANE today follow: https://www.asor.org/anetoday/2023/10/dogs-social-fabric For the original research paper in Oxford Journal of Archaeology (open access): https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.12268