Investigating Diet and Oral Health in the Māori Dog (Kurī) using Archaeological Assemblages from the North Island, Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

Polynesian dogs accompanied Pacific voyagers when they first arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand approximately 700 years ago and are referred to as kurī by Māori. Kurī were important to Māori for a variety of functional and cultural purposes and consequently kurī remains are common in many pre-European archaeological sites across Aotearoa New Zealand. While many studies consider the economic importance of kurī, few studies have examined changes in dog husbandry practices in pre-European Māori society. In this thesis I use dental markers as proxies of kurī diet and health and consider changes to the anthropogenic niches that these animals occupied in the past. This study investigates whether there are changes in kurī diet and health over time using eight North Island archaeological assemblages. The kurī assemblages from these selected sites were assigned to three broad periods: Early (ca. AD 1250-1450), Middle (ca. AD 1450-1650), and Late (ca. AD 1650-1800). Based on prior research it was initially hypothesised that there would be observable changes in kurī diet and health over time. A total of 135 kurī specimens were analysed from the North Island assemblages for dental pathologies, tooth wear, developmental defects, and dental variants. The findings of this research indicated that the North Island kurī were healthy overall as the frequency of dental pathologies was very low. There was some temporal change in kurī diet over time based on tooth wear, although much of this change was driven by the high tooth wear scores from the late-seventeenth century Kohika site where an abrasive diet was indicated. Developmental defects were low in frequency, and the timing of those defects observed coincided with the post-weaning life history stage in dogs. These findings were compared with other Pacific and global dog dental pathology studies to examine the effects of different anthropogenic niches on aspects of dog life histories, as well as aspects of the ongoing co-evolutionary processes of human-dog mutualisms.