Domestication of Reindeer

Reindeer (Rangifer tarandus, also called caribou in North America), were the last animal domesticated by humans--and arguably, remain by and large undomesticated today. There is archaeological evidence that reindeer were hunted at least as long ago as 45,000 years ago, from cave sites such as Combe Grenal and Vergisson, France; but it is unlikely that humans successfully controlled much of reindeer behavior or affected any morphological changes in reindeer until about 3000 years ago or so.

It's unlikely, rather than certain, for a number of reasons, not the least because there is no archaeological site which shows evidence for domestication of reindeer, at least as yet. The sites, if they exist, would be located in the Eurasian arctic, and there has been little excavation there to date.

However, there is ethnographic evidence, in that the pastoral peoples of the Eurasian arctic and subarctic (such as the Sayan, Sami and Tungus) exploited (and still do) the reindeer for meat, milk, riding, and pack transport. None of these are evidenced in the archaeological record to date. However, reindeer saddles and sledges used by the reindeer herders give us a clue. Saddles used by ethnographic Sayan appear to be derived from horse saddles of the Mongolian steppes; those used by Tungus are derived from Turkic cultures on the Altai steppe. Sledges also have attributes that appear to be adapted from those used with cattle or horses. These contacts are estimated to have occurred no longer ago than about 1000 BC.

Why Weren't Reindeer Domesticated Earlier?

Why reindeer were domesticated so late is speculation, but some scholars believe that it may relate to the docile nature of reindeer. As wild adults reindeer are willing to be milked and hang around human settlements, but at the same time they are also extremely independent, and don't need to be fed or housed by humans. In this respect, the notion that domestication involves changes in behavior both in the animal and the human is upheld.

Although some scholars have argued that reindeer have been kept as domestic herds by hunter-gatherers since the late Pleistocene, a recent study of reindeer bones dated from 130,000 to 10,000 years ago (Weinstock 2000) showed no morphological changes in reindeer skeletal material at all. Further, reindeer are still not found outside their native habitats; both of these would be physical marks of domestication.

Because there is so little concrete data to date, the domestication of reindeer is a complex issue; see the sources for more information, in particular Ingold pp. 95-143.

Sources

Bleed, Peter 2006 Living in the human niche. Evolutionary Archaeology 15:8-10.

Ingold, Tim. 1980. Hunters, pastoralists, and ranchers: Reindeer economics and their transformations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Kwon, Heonik 1998 The saddle and the sledge: Hunting as comparative narrative in Siberia and beyond. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 41:15-127.

Laufer, Berthold. 1917. The reindeer and its domestication. Memoir 4, American Anthropological Association, Lancaster PA.

Weinstock, Jacobo. 2000. Late Pleistocene reindeer populations in Middle and Western Europe: An osteometrical study of Rangifer tarandus. Mo Vince Verlag, Tübingen.

White, Randall. 1999. Husbandry and Herd Control in the Upper Paleolithic: A Critical Review of the Evidence. Current Anthropology 30:609-632

Thanks to Jeannine Davis-Kimball for much-needed advice about this issue. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.