Early Evidence for Pig and Dog Husbandry from the Neolithic Site of An Son, Southern Vietnam P. J. PIPER, a,b * F. Z. CAMPOS, c ** D. NGOC KINH, d N. AMANO, a M. OXENHAM, b B. CHI HOANG, d P. BELLWOOD b AND A. WILLIS b a Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines b School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia c School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong d Center for Archaeological Studies, Southern Institute of Sustainable Development, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam ABSTRACT An Son in southern Vietnam is one of a series of Neolithic (food producing) settlement/cemetery sites in Southeast Asia that appear, archaeologically, shortly before and after 2000 cal. BC. Excavations in 2009 produced a small but important assemblage of vertebrate remains that permit relative comparisons with other zooarchaeological assemblages of similar date in Thailand and northern Vietnam. At An Son, domestic dogs are present from the earliest known phases of occupation with butchery evidence and a high proportion of canid remains, suggesting they were possibly used as a food resource. Suid bones were recovered from the earliest phases of the site excavated, and pig husbandry can be identified from at least 1800 to 1600cal. BC. There is also evidence for the use of a range of other resources including fishing, hunting and the capturing of turtles. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key words: Vietnam; Neolithic; subsistence; pig husbandry; domesticated dog Introduction The Neolithic settlement site of An Son is located in An Ninh Tay commune, Duc Hoa District, close to the northern border of Long An Province, approximately 75 km from the sea (Figure 1). It is one of several known Neolithic sites within the Mekong River system and is situated approximately 300 m east of the Vam Co Dong River, on a slightly raised alluvial terrace that flanks an active flood plain close to the Cambodian border. A series of 31 radiocarbon dates indicate that the site was occupied continuously from approximately 2100 cal. BC until 1050 cal. BC with no hiatus or stratigraphic break evident in the archaeological record (Bellwood et al., in press). The settlement mound is ringed by a midden of material that appears to have been discarded during occupation of the site and includes a considerable amount of material culture with close affinities to the Neolithic of central and northeastern Thailand. Excavations of the midden in 2009 also produced more than 8000 fragments of mammal, reptile and fish bones. These inform on the subsistence strategies of the inhabitants of An Son during the site’ s occupation and enable comparisons to be made between several vertebrate assemblages from across the region of similar date that have also been studied in detail. For example, recent excavations at sites of the Phung Nguyen Culture in northern Vietnam have produced evi- dence of agricultural populations and rice cultivation from approximately 4000 years ago (Nguyen, 1998). A study of selected vertebrate remains from one of these sites, Man Bac (1800–1500 cal. BC) in Ninh Binh Province, sug- gested that the inhabitants relied on domestic pigs and the hunting of deer, bovines and small carnivores (Sawada et al., 2011) as well as fish caught in lagoons and estuaries (Toizumi et al., 2011). However, mammal diversity identi- fied at Man Bac was considerably less than that of the preceding Hoabinhian hunter–gatherer sites, and the authors suggest that hunting supplemented the meat produced by domestic animals rather than providing subsistence staples for this agricultural community (Sawada et al., 2011). A few canid remains were inter- preted as being from domestic dog, indicating that both * Correspondence to: School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. e-mail: Phil_piper2003@yahoo.ie ** Correspondence to: School of Humanities, University of Hong Kong, Pok- fulam, Hong Kong. e-mail: cfredeliza@yahoo.ca Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 4 August 2011 Revised 27 November 2011 Accepted 30 November 2011 International Journal of Osteoarchaeology Int. J. Osteoarchaeol. (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/oa.2226