A thousand years ago, the ancestors of today’s Barkindji people carefully buried a dingo (or garli, in the Barkindji language) in a mound of shells.
Archaeologists recently studied the burial in what’s now New South Wales, Australia. They found that the Barkindji ancestors had buried the dingo with the same care and ceremony as any beloved human member of the community and looked after the grave for centuries. The burial reveals that dingoes were, as Australian Museum and University of Sydney archaeologist and study co-author Amy Way puts it, “deeply valued and loved” by ancient people in Australia.
The long-lost dingo
Five years ago, Barkindji Elder Uncle Badger Bates and National Parks and Wildlife Service archaeologist Dan Witter saw bones eroding out of a road cut in Kinchega National Park, an area along the Baaka, or Darling River, in Western Australia. Badger recognized the bones as a dingo, lying on its left side in what was once a carefully built mound of river mussel shells.
