One of the things zooarchaeologist Paula was trying to understand this season was what was life like for the dogs in ancient Ashkelon. Were they pets? Did they live in houses? Were the part of the religion in Ashkelon? Here she tells us what she knows now about the dogs and how the dog skeletons helped her to learn about life for the ancient dogs of Ashkelon.
Junior Archaeology Assignment
In the video Paula talked about how diseases made the bones in the dogs sick and made them weaker. She said she could see the places the bones were sick when she looked at the skeletons. Here is an experiment to see what happens to sick bones. Take 2 chicken bones, put one in a cup of vinegar and watch how it changes compared to the bone that is not in vinegar. The vinegar is like the diseases that the Ashkelon dogs have and makes the bone weaker. E-mail me pictures of you performing this experiment and your thoughts on the bone in vinegar and the one out of vinegar at nmoos@cps.edu. I will post them on the blog!
Question of the Day
If these dogs were not pets, when do you think dogs began to become pets that lived with people?