JUST AS DOGS FULFILL A VARIETY OF FUNCTIONAL ROLES IN TODAY'S societies, they played a wide range of roles in past societies, aside from their role as social companions. The purpose in this chapter is to identify some of the roles that have been at least suggested on logical grounds, and in some cases inferred with great reliability. One should not lose sight of the difference between plausible supposition and secure inference, and it is important to identify which applies best in any given case, though the boundary is not always fully distinct. Quite obviously, one role for which the term “secure inference” definitely applies is that dogs were often objects (or subjects) of deliberate burial at death, and one can reliably say that they fulfilled a mortuary role. That is also an example of a role that they played in past societies that they continue to play in today's societies. In fact, it turns out that the roles played by dogs in the past were much like the ones they now play, allowing for the different twenty-first century setting of today's societies, with all its technology, transportation and communication capabilities, and so on.

DOGS AS A FOOD SOURCE

One of the roles that dogs clearly played in the past seems, at first, to run directly counter to their role as social companions, or friends, a role highlighted by their frequent burial at death.