Colonial-era graves for dogs found in Williamsburg

Two Colonial-era graves found on the campus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg contained dogs, a find that is "unprecedented," archaeologists said Friday.

The discovery raises questions about who would have valued their animals enough to give them a formal burial, said Joe Jones, director of the college's Center for Archaeological Research.

No animal graves associated with the European colonists of that period have ever been found.

When discovered July 13, the small, rectangular shafts were thought to contain the remains of children, he said.

Analysis has shown that the bone fragments were actually those of small to medium-size dogs.

The graves were revealed as pavement was removed prior to the installation of pipes for heating and cooling in campus buildings.

Each contained about a handful of remains, scattered throughout the soil.

Most of the pieces were smaller than a fingernail. The graves dated between the late 1600s and mid-1700s, in the early years of the campus, which was established in 1693.

"During this period of early Colonial history in Virginia, there's no good evidence for people keeping dogs for household pets," Jones said. "And if not the English colonists, what else might be going on? And there are some intriguing possibilities."

Native Americans would have been on campus in its early years, he said, as one of the first roles of the college was to convert them to Christianity.

Dog burials are well-established in Native American settlements; near Hopewell in the 1970s and '80s, archaeologists found the skeletons of 112 dogs buried by Indians nearly 1,000 years ago.

African slaves or servants also would have been on campus, Jones said.

"This was kind of a multi ethnic community," he said. "It makes us wonder if that has anything to do with this surprising discovery of these dog burials. I don't know that we'll ever know.

"It just makes us all wonder: Who were the people who treated the dogs this way, and buried them this way?"

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com