HAVING ELUCIDATED THE BASIC ANCESTRY OF THE DOG, MY INITIAL purpose in this chapter is to clarify the morphological changes involved in the evolution of the wolf to the dog and how they manifest themselves. In conjunction with this effort, it is important to consider how these changes bear directly on an understanding of the timing of dog domestication. This chapter also explores how challenging it can be to distinguish between dogs and wolves in certain situations. Last, the coverage includes a particular line of contextual evidence, namely dog burials, that bears directly on these issues. As with the coverage of morphological changes, this more conceptual component appeals to factors introduced in the previous chapter. It is empirical in the sense that there is genuine evidence, but the kind of evidence speaks directly to the fundamental nature of this particular domestic relationship.

As noted in Chapter 2, morphological changes are a routine phenomenon among different animals undergoing domestication (e.g., Clutton-Brock 1981, 1999). In the present case, as highlighted, dogs initially became smaller than wolves (Morey 1990, 1992, Dayan 1994; Clutton-Brock 1995, 1999), as did many early domesticates in comparison to their ancestral species (e.g., Epstein 1955; Clutton-Brock 1981; Brökönyi 1983; Tchernov & Horwitz 1991; Crabtree 1993). They also underwent some allometrically associated morphological changes (see discussion that follows).