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| A team of archaeologists has identified a Hopewellian burial specimen from Illinois as a juvenile bobcat wearing a collar [Credit: Kenneth Farnsworth] |
The mound is one of 14 dirt domes of various sizes that sit on a bluff overlooking the Illinois River, about 80 kilometers north of St. Louis. Their builders belonged to the Hopewell culture, traders and hunter-gatherers who lived in scattered villages of just a couple of dozen individuals each and created animal-inspired artwork, like otter-shaped bowls and ceramics engraved with birds. “Villages would come together to bury people in these mounds,” says Kenneth Farnsworth, a Hopewell expert at the Illinois State Archaeological Survey in Champaign. “It was a way to mark the area as belonging to your ancestors.”
Archaeologists rushed to excavate the mounds in the early 1980s because of an impending highway project. When they dug into the largest one—28 meters in diameter and 2.5 meters high—they unearthed the bodies of 22 people buried in a ring around a central tomb that contained the skeleton of an infant. They also discovered a small animal interred by itself in this ring; marine shells and bear teeth pendants carved from bone lay near its neck, all containing drill holes, suggesting they had been part of a collar or necklace. The Hopewell buried their dogs—though in their villages, not in these mounds—and the researchers assumed the animal was a canine. They placed the remains in a box, labeled it “puppy burial,” and shelved it away in the archives of the Illinois State Museum in Springfield.
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| A bobkitten, perhaps resembling the one Native Americans buried 2000 years ago [Credit: Robert Shantz/Alamy] |
When Perri analyzed the bones, she found that they belonged to a bobcat, likely between 4 and 7 months old. The skeleton was complete, and there were no cut marks or other signs of trauma, suggesting to Perri that the animal had not been sacrificed. When she looked back at the original excavation photos, she saw that the bobcat had been carefully placed in its grave. “It looked respectful; its paws were placed together,” she says. “It was clearly not just thrown into a hole.”
When Perri told Farnsworth, he was floored. “It shocked me to my toes,” he says. “I’ve never seen anything like it in almost 70 excavated mounds.” Because the mounds were intended for humans, he says, somebody bent the rules to get the cat buried there. “Somebody important must have convinced other members of the society that it must be done. I’d give anything to know why.”
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| Ancient Native Americans buried these bone pendants and shell beads together with the bobcat [Credit: Kenneth Farnsworth] |
That’s certainly possible, Zeder says. “Taming can be a pathway to domestication.” But she cautions against reading too much into one find. “It’s just a single specimen in a very special context. Talking about domestication might be stretching it.” If the Hopewell really viewed the bobcat as a pet, she says, they would probably have buried it in the same place as their dogs. Instead, she suspects that the cat may have had a symbolic status, perhaps representing a connection to the spiritual world of the wild. “This could be more of a cosmological association.”
Jean-Denis Vigne, a zooarchaeologist at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, calls the find “a very unique and important discovery.” He says it reminds him of hunter-gatherer societies in South America that bring young monkeys and other wild animals into their homes, rearing and sometimes breastfeeding them as a way to thank nature for bountiful game and crops. Still, Vigne says he’s not aware of people burying these animals. “There’s a lot that still needs to be explored.”
Unfortunately, further work on the bobcat may not be possible. The museum where the bones are housed is facing a shutdown due to state budget cuts, and Perri says she can no longer access the samples. Public groups and museum staff are fighting hard to stop the closure, she says.
Author: David Grimm | Source: Science AAAS [July 03, 2015]