Student and Early Careers Conference 2026: Julianna Fike

When Do Dogs Pay Off?: A Literature Review of Canids as Biotechnology in the Archaeological Record

Julianna Fike

Understanding when people used dogs as hunting tools rather than food resources is essential for interpreting subsistence strategies and human-animal relationships in the archaeological record. Framed through human behavioral ecology and the patch investment model, dogs can be viewed as an adaptive technology when they reduce search time, increase encounter rates, and expand prey breadth. Particularly in more dense environments, dogs can increase encounters with secretive prey that humans may have difficulty detecting. In open environments, dogs aid in chasing fast prey into traps. If dogs were utilized as hunting tools, their presence should correlate with increased prey representation in faunal assemblages, burials, and dog shelters. If no shifts occur, we can assume dogs were likely companions without an elevated social status. At this time, there are no results regarding the particular data set. However, results from computer simulations support the application of the patch investment model to canid biotechnology. In these tests, dogs are associated with increased net caloric returns and decreased search costs. Pairing canid and human hunters appears to be an important and useful decision.

The hypotheses of this literature review have not been applied towards a faunal assemblage but to computer simulations. The particular simulation utilized is Stardew Valley. This application looks at how horses aid the forager in reducing search costs. In this simulation, dogs do not have a useful purpose but the horse is faster than the forager. This is why the horse is chosen instead of the dog, despite the topic being dogs.