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| John Singleton Copley, Young Lady with a Bird and Dog |
Regular readers of this blog may have a sense by now that history and animals are two of my passions because I post on one or the other topic fairly often. But a chance to write about both in one post? Unheard of! Until now.
Archaeological researchers at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., report that “bone fragments found this summer in two unmarked graves on campus are the remains of dogs interred some two centuries ago" or more, according to a news release from the college.
The discovery “represents a significant scholarly mystery,” the release says, because there is no prior evidence of “the formal interment of dogs” in the American colonies. The graves date from the late 17th to mid 18th centuries.
Both graves were “carefully excavated rectangular shafts, consistent with human burials," and the fragments found in them were tiny. So the initial assumption was that the bones were those of human children. Only when the fragments, most of which were smaller than a fingernail, were separated from the soil was an expert able to determine that they were canine, not human.
So what does this mean, exactly? The news release from the college, which you can read here, steers clear of suggesting any broad implications.
Were these burials an anomaly, a break with the norms of the colonial period? Or were colonial attitudes toward pets more similar to our own than previously thought, and only now have we found evidence of that fact?
My own theory, based on nothing more than supposition, is that if the proper burial of cats and dogs had been common in colonial times, evidence of it would have turned up prior to this discovery. Perhaps the dogs in question were a child's beloved companions, and when they died the child pleaded with his or her parents to give them a proper burial, as bizarre as that might have seemed to most people at the time.
Even in the 17th and 18th centuries, there must have been some forward-thinking colonists who were viewed as eccentric, even odd, because of their advanced attitudes toward animals. Maybe the parents in this case fell into that category, and granted a youngster's fervent wish. It’s only an assumption, but a pleasant one.
