Cynophagy, or the consumption of dog meat, is very uncommon in modern western societies other than in times of crisis or shortage, while it is better established in certain oriental cultures. Nevertheless, a study published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, with the participation of Nohemi Sala, a researcher at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), confirms that dog meat was consumed by the inhabitants of the El Portalón de Cueva Mayor site in Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain), over a long period from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age.

In the course of meticulous excavations, the specialists identified a variety of marks of human activity on a total of 130 dog bone remains recovered from different levels of occupation, from both domestic and funerary contexts. The work to identify the different marks, performed by Sala, revealed cut marks, intentional fractures, evidence of fire modification, cooking, and the presence of tooth marks that may very well be of human origin.

“This shows us that over 2000 years, the inhabitants of El Portalón consumed dog meat, although we can say that this was occasional, due to the small number of remains found. This consumption could have been during sporadic events of food shortage or famine, though perhaps also it was a ritual act or because dog meat was considered a delicacy”, explain Mª Ángeles Galindo Pellicena (MAR; UCM-ISCIII) and Nuria García Ellicean (UCM), who led this research.

In the Neolithic levels at El Portalón (7000 to 4500 years old), the detected level of dog meat consumption is meager, but this is still one of the earliest indications of cynophagy in the Iberian Peninsula, together with the El Mirador site, nearby in the Sierra de Atapuerca. The slight evidence of dog meat consumption at the majority of sites in the Peninsula during the Neolithic makes the case of El Portalón even more interesting.

Evidence from the Chalcolithic (5000 to 4000 years old) and Bronze Age (4000 to 2000 years old) levels is rather more abundant, and shows that the inhabitants of the Sierra de Atapuerca, despite cultural, social, environmental, and even population changes, practiced cynophagy consistently over time.

Overall, the evidence from El Portalón supports the idea of a change in the use of dogs between the Neolithic, when cynophagy is hardly seen, and later periods (Chalcolithic, Bronze), in which ritual use and consumption become more frequent.

The other participants in this work are researchers from the Human Evolution Laboratory at the Universidad de Burgos, the Centro Mixto UCM-Instituto de Salud Carlos III, the Museo Arqueológico Regional in Alcalá de Henares, and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, from where it was led by Mª Ángeles Galindo Pellicena (MAR; UCM-ISCIII) and Nuria García Completeness (UCM).

En conjunto, las evidencias aportadas por El Portalón apoyan un posible cambio en el uso en el perro desde el Neolítico, donde apenas se observa cinofagia, hasta períodos posteriores (Calcolítico, Bronce) en los que el uso ritual y su consumo se hacen más frecuentes.

En el trabajo participan investigadores del LEH de la Universidad de Burgos, el Centro Mixto UCM-Instituto de Salud Carlos III, el Museo Arqueológico Regional de Alcalá de Henares y la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y ha sido liderado por Mª Ángeles Galindo Pellicena (MAR; UCM-ISCIII) y Nuria García García (UCM).