Early evidence for pig and dog husbandry from the neolithic site of an son, Southern Vietnam

P. J. Piper*, F. Z. Campos, D. Ngoc Kinh, N. Amano, M. Oxenham, B. Chi Hoang, P. Bellwood, A. Willis

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

An Son in southern Vietnam is one of a series of Neolithic (food producing) settlement/cemetery sites in Southeast Asia that appear, archaeologically, shortly before and after 2000cal. bc. Excavations in 2009 produced a small but important assemblage of vertebrate remains that permit relative comparisons with other zooarchaeological assemblages of similar date in Thailand and northern Vietnam. At An Son, domestic dogs are present from the earliest known phases of occupation with butchery evidence and a high proportion of canid remains, suggesting they were possibly used as a food resource. Suid bones were recovered from the earliest phases of the site excavated, and pig husbandry can be identified from at least 1800 to 1600cal. bc. There is also evidence for the use of a range of other resources including fishing, hunting and the capturing of turtles.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)68-78
Number of pages11
JournalInternational journal of osteoarchaeology
Volume24
Issue number1
Early online date6 Feb 2012
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2014

Bibliographical note

Acknowledgements The authors thank the three reviewers whose comments and suggestions helped improve the content of this article. They also thank Andria Niedzielski and Lawrence Heaney of the Field Museum of Natural History for providing additional images of the golden jackal used for measurements, and the Australian National Wildlife Collection of the Commonwealth and Scientific Industrial Research Institute Organisation for data on din-goes. Peter Bellwood and Marc Oxenham thank the ARC for providing funding for the excavations at An Son. The research of Philip Piper and Noel Amano was partially funded by a grant awarded to Armand Mijares and Philip Piper from the Chancellor’s Office, University of the Philippines, and administered by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Development.

Keywords

  • Domesticated dog
  • Neolithic
  • Pig husbandry
  • Subsistence
  • Vietnam

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