Jamestown Colony residents ate dogs with Indigenous ancestry
Dogs with Indigenous ancestry were eaten during a period of starvation at Jamestown, the first English settlement in North America in the 17th century, according to new research in American Antiquity, published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology.
This discovery changes historians’ understanding of how Indigenous communities negotiated their relationship with rising colonial powers during this period. It also suggests that early European colonists depended on local Indigenous communities for their very survival, especially during the initial settlement period.
Researchers analysed ancient mitochondrial DNA from archaeological dogs from Jamestown ...











