Honouring our animal companions in death

In a recent "Faith and Reason" column, David Tombs wrote about Gravedigger Bob, a Brazilian dog that so missed its master that it camped out in his cemetery and was ultimately buried there. Dogs were the first animals that humans domesticated, the oldest dating back at least 15,000 years and in all likelihood, with a much longer ancestry beyond that. Burying them with humans is actually a very widespread practice.

The best example I have uncovered comes from Ban Non Wat, a Bronze Age site in Thailand where we uncovered 700 human graves dating back 3000 years.

We always knew when a grave was about to be revealed when we began to trace the form of a complete pottery vessel or two, because they were placed with the dead as mortuary offerings. On this occasion, we uncovered a complete pot, and then the distinctive contour of bone, a skull.

This initially gave me a bit of a shock, because if human, it was a very strange shape. But the first teeth made it clear that this was the burial of a dog.

Usually, we found dogs buried with a human, but once we uncovered the complete grave, we found that the dog was the only occupant. Moreover, it was actually cradling its food bowl in its left paw. This was so extraordinary that it was used as the front cover of a major publication, the Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology. At another site most humans were buried with just the dog’s head.

Dogs are not the only animals to be given special treatment when they died.

The Romans had special cavalry units, each known as an ala quingenaria. These powerful mobile units 500 strong were often stationed on the borders of the Empire.

A remarkable cemetery has recently been excavated next to the Roman fort at Cannstatt near Stuttgart in Germany. It contains the graves of 109 horses. One of these uncovered in 2024 was found with two jugs and an oil lamp next to its forelegs.

Similar offerings had also been placed with the soldiers in their graveyard, so this horse must have been very special. The horse burials were neatly spaced, so it is likely that they were marked in some way.

Nor were the Romans alone in burying horses ritually.

The Chinese did the same 3000 years ago, along with the charioteers and the chariots they hauled into battle.