MITCHELL, SOUTH DAKOTA—Archaeologists excavating at the ca. 1000 A.D. Mitchell village site in southeastern South Dakota have unearthed a number of canine bones, including those belonging to dogs, foxes, and wolves that are considerably bigger than anticipated. According to the Daily Republic, Max Planck Institute zooarchaeologist Angela Perri is leading the study of the remains, which is giving scholars an idea of what domesticated dog species were like before European breeds were introduced to the area. "It kind of gives us a more rounded out picture of how humans are interacting with other animals, with their environment, things like that," Perri says. "Mitchell's a great place to do it. It's kind of a unique environment on the Plains. We have a lot of information about dogs from other places like the southwest and the deep south, but in the plains, we don't really know about what's going on with dogs." For more on the archaeology of canines, go to “More than Man’s Best Friend.”
