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Broken Canines from Alaskan Cave Deposits: Re-Evaluating Evidence for Domesticated Dog and Early Humans in Alaska

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

E. James Dixon  and
George S. Smith
E. James Dixon
Affiliation:
University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, AK 99701
George S. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, AK 99701
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Abstract

Broken canines from two caves on the Porcupine River, Alaska are analyzed with respect to size, development, morphology, breakage pattern, and stratigraphic placement. These analyses indicate that they are deciduous bear teeth exfoliated in these caves through noncultural processes associated with dental development. Similarity of these teeth to the canines recovered from various stratigraphic levels at Trail Creek Caves 2 and 9, on the Seward Peninsula, Alaska (Larsen 1968:58), indicates that the Trail Creek specimens (including specimens from levels dating to the late Pleistocene) are also naturally exfoliated bear teeth and not dog canines (Canis familiaris) broken out by human beings, as originally suggested.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , April 1986 , pp. 341 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1986

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