Peruvian hairless dogs—a medium-sized elegant Indigenous breed with pointy ears—a variation of which is today known as a Peruvian inca orchid breed by the American Kennel Club, are widely represented in ancient Andean coastal pottery. Celebrated as a national symbol, they were declared part of Peru's cultural heritage in 2000.
A new study published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology provides the first physical evidence of Peruvian hairless dogs from the only Wari Empire site found to date, on the coast of northern Peru, known as Castillo de Huarmey .
Situated about 190 miles north of Lima, the 110-acre site is a Wari administrative and funerary complex that existed between 600 and 1050 CE, 400 years before the Inca rose to power.
The site is famous for the discovery of the first undisturbed elite tomb in 2012 with 58 high-status females and 1,300 artifacts and six human sacrifices buried, and the side burials of elite craftsmen with gold and silver and bronze tools in 2022, yielding extraordinary finds and information about the Wari Empire's provincial management.
"Our findings indicate that humans and dogs coexisted at this Wari site, but reconstructing their bond is challenging, as past emotions are difficult to capture through archaeological methods," says first author, Weronika Tomczyk , a research associate in the Department of Anthropology and postdoctoral fellow in the Ecology, Evolution, Environment and Society Program at Dartmouth. "The goal of our study was to not only present data on Castillo de Huarmey's dog burials, but also emphasize that people in the past had often contradictory relationships with the animals, just as they do today: a pet for one group of people could at the same time be considered a pest by their closest neighbors."
The site's vicinity is one of the driest, hyper-arid deserts along the Pacific coast, which helped preserve organic materials and artifacts, such as hair, bone, decorated pottery, pigment, clothes, and leather.
One of the many artifacts found was a ceramic vessel in the shape of a seated, anthropomorphized Peruvian hairless dog holding an object resembling an instrument.
The remains of many South American camelids—most likely domesticated llamas and alpacas, which may have been funerary offerings and refuse—were discovered at the site between 2010 and 2025, and the archaeologists also found dog skeletal remains.
Large portions of Castillo de Huarmey have been heavily looted due to the 1970 earthquake, which caused one of the site's sides to collapse, opening up burial chambers with pottery and artifacts. While the deeper, never-looted layer preserved the Wari context, the upper layers where most of the animal remains have been found, were intermixed.
As the archaeologists were exploring the northern part of the main ceremonial area, they found three sets of dog skeletal remains that caught their special attention. The first one was a naturally mummified dog skull with its hairless skin visible and ears still attached, painted with cinnabar—a popular pigment used to adorn deceased in ancient Peru. The team also found a larger dog skull, and a naturally mummified male dog skeleton in a shallow pit with only its lower front limbs missing. Initially, the team thought that the dog may have been buried 50 years ago when the looting had occurred, but Tomczyk noticed that the dog was hairless and all three individuals were missing their first premolars.
"What I noticed is that some of the dog skeletons were missing teeth, and not that they lost them during their lifespan; some teeth, especially first premolars and sometimes last molars, had just never erupted," said Tomczyk. "And then I found in the literature that the same gene which is responsible for hairlessness in dogs is responsible for a reduced number of teeth, indicating that these were Peruvian hairless dogs."
The researchers used standard zooarchaeological methods to estimate how old the dogs were. They also conducted an isotopic analysis of bone and teeth, which provide information about the life of the animal such as what it ate and drank, and where it came from, based on the isotopes of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium. The latter element represents the bioavailable geological signals of the region where an individual lived during a formation of specific sampled tissue, so it can be used to infer a provenance or migration patterns. Then, the researchers compared the data to camelid and human data from the site.
"Isotopic analyses of a dog's tooth give a signal of its life as a puppy because dog teeth erupt so fast, and the bone gives a signal of more or less the last year of its life," said Tomczyk. "Such sampling strategy aimed to provide signals from distinct stages of a dog's life."
The research team recovered 341 dog bone specimens that are estimated to have come from a minimum of 19 dogs, as well as the complete mummified male dog. These included the bones of a 6- to 8-week-old puppy that were buried with one of the elite craftsman, nicknamed the "Master Basketmaker," bones of an adult dog that were buried in the site's palace, and bones of a partial puppy skeleton that were buried with a male guardian recorded as XY, who was likely sacrificed as a tomb guardian.
Most of the dogs were adults when they were buried. Some were buried intentionally while others were just found as refuse. And very few had butchery marks indicating that they were not widely consumed.
In radiocarbon dating the mummified dog, the team determined that the dog is at least 1,200 years old, providing the oldest radiocarbon date from Castillo de Huarmey to date, which has important ramifications for the site's chronology.
The isotopic analysis revealed that most dogs consumed some maize—a staple in the Pre-Hispanic Andes, indicating that their diets were similar to those of humans. Moreover, when tested dogs suspected of hairlessness were puppies, their diet was more similar to the diet of children, whereas when they were adults, their diet became more variable.
"We do not know if the dogs were intentionally fed maize or if perhaps, they were just eating leftovers or trash," said Tomczyk. "Yet, the distinct dietary patterns of hairless puppies provide insights into what may have been organized breeding."
"While we will never know if any of the three dogs were pets or how people treated them, it is evident they received different treatment than other dogs," said Tomczyk.
Miłosz Giersz, Wiesław Więckowski, and Roberto Pimentel Nita at the University of Warsaw, and Claire Ebert at the University of Pittsburgh, also served as co-authors of the study.
