page_title: Ashkelon dog cemetery
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Ashkelon dog cemetery / Description
caption_attribution_description: Canaan Dog
context_page_description: The Ashkelon dog cemetery is a burial ground in the city of Ashkelon in Israel where possibly thousands of dogs were interred in the fifth to third centuries BC. The majority of the dogs were puppies; all had similarities to the modern Canaan Dog, perhaps representing the ancestral population from which the modern breed is descended. It is the largest known cemetery of this kind in the ancient world.
context_section_description: The cemetery was discovered in the Ashkelon National Park by Lawrence Stager during excavations undertaken between 1986–1994 for the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. His team uncovered the skeletons of more than 1,300 dogs. They had been buried at a time when the Phoenician-populated city was ruled by Achaemenid Persia as a client state.
  Most of the dogs were found buried in a series of terraces which had previously been occupied by a large warehouse overlooking the sea. The burial ground extended south into an area that appears to have only been briefly been used as a dog cemetery before being built upon, and probably extended west into an area that has been lost to coastal erosion. The burials have been dated to between the fifth and the first part of the fourth century BC. The burial ground may have been in use for about fifty years. Stager notes that as "only the eastern limits of the cemetery have been established, we can speculate that it was originally much larger, with dog burials probably numbering in the thousands." He describes it as "by far the largest dog cemetery known in the ancient world." Another series of burials was found to the north-east, where dogs had been buried in streets or in thoroughfares between large buildings. These were of later dates, from the late Persian period to the early Hellenistic period.
  Each animal occupied an individual shallow pit and was laid on its side with its tail tucked between its hind legs. The burials were not marked, there were no offerings in the pits and the dogs were not oriented in any consistent direction. The corpses were carefully interred, in some cases perhaps having their limbs bound at the ankles before burial. In contrast, the burial pits were dug somewhat haphazardly, overlapping and occasionally intruding on each other. At least sixty percent of the dogs were puppies; some were probably fetuses. The burials appear to have taken place individually over time, rather than en masse.
  The cause of death does not appear to have been sacrificial. None of the skeletons show evidence of fatal injuries, and they do not show any signs of having been cut up or skinned before burial. It is possible that they could have been poisoned, which would have left no traces on the skeletons. However, it seems more likely that the deaths were due to natural causes, as the death rates for urban dogs in a pre-veterinary environment were very high; perhaps as many as fifty percent are likely to have died in their first year.
  An alternative hypothesis has been put forward suggesting that the dogs died in an epidemic. However, this is inconsistent with the demographics of the buried dogs, as an outbreak would be expected to affect all members of the affected population, whereas the Ashkelon population is heavily skewed towards puppies.
  The dogs were physically similar, with close anatomical similarities to the present-day Canaan Dog. Rather than being a single breed, they appear to represent examples of a naturally occurring canid population adapted to the hot and semi-arid conditions of the region. Dogs of this type gave rise to the Canaan Dog through selective breeding in modern times.
caption: A Canaan Dog, a breed that looks similar to the dogs buried at Ashkelon
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