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The American Midwest is dotted with large earthworks left behind by ancient peoples known as the Hopewell culture. Among their impressive projects were burial mounds where they entombed their dead. Inside one of these, archaeologists found something surprising: a bobcat, buried among humans and in a similar manner [1, 3, 4]. According to Perri et al, who published the findings in 2015, “To our knowledge, this is the only decorated wild cat burial in the archaeological record” [4]. Although there is debate about what the relationship might have been between the bobcat and the Hopewell who buried it, there can be no doubt that this was one special cat.
Who Were the Hopewell?
The Hopewell culture flourished between approximately 100 B.C. and 400 A.D., during what is known as the Middle Woodland Period [2]. The name comes from Mordecai Hopewell, the landowner on whose property the first mounds were excavated [2]. No on knows what these people called themselves, so the name of the first archaeological site was applied to the entire culture.
Hopewell peoples lived in small, scattered villages [2, 3]. They were hunter-gatherers and traders [2, 3]. They also practiced some agriculture, growing crops such as sunflower and squash [2]. Their trade networks spread far and wide, from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast to the Gulf of Mexico [2]. The Hopewell often incorporated materials from such far-away places in their distinctive art [2]. Animal motifs are common in their artwork as well [2, 3].
It was the mounds, however, that first drew archaeologists to this fascinating culture. People from multiple villages would come together to construct ceremonial sites by shaping the earth into walls [2]. Geometric enclosures were common, but sometimes they were irregular [2]. The Hopewell also built conical or loaf-shaped funerary mounds inside earthwork enclosures at mortuary sites [2, 3].
A Case of Mistaken Identity
One of these mortuary sites, the Elizabeth site, sits overlooking the Illinois River in western Illinois, about 50 miles (80 km) north of St. Louis, Missouri [3, 4]. It contains 14 mounds [3]. In the 1980s, a highway project threatened to destroy the site, so archeologists raced to excavate it [3]. Inside the largest mound, they uncovered the bodies of 22 people buried in a ring around a central tomb which contained the remains of an infant [3]. Within the ring, an animal was also interred [3]. Seashell beads and carved bear-tooth pendants lay near its neck, suggesting it was buried with a collar [1, 3, 4]. The Hopewell peoples are known to have kept dogs and buried them in their villages, so the archaeologists labeled the small skeleton “puppy burial” and stuck it in storage at the Illinois State Museum at Springfield [3].
In 2011, Angela Perri was a doctoral student from the University of Durham in the UK doing research at the Illinois State Museum. She was interested in ancient dog burials, but when she opened the “puppy burial” box from the Elizabeth site, one look at the skull told her the remains were not canine. She knew she was looking at a cat. [3]
Perri’s curiosity was piqued, so she analyzed the bones and discovered that the animal was a bobkitten, 4-7 months old [1, 3, 4]. Perri and her colleagues were flabbergasted [3]. There is no other known instance of a bobcat buried in a Hopewell mortuary mound [3]. In fact, this is the only wild cat buried individually and with ceremony, the way a human or beloved pet would be, in the archeological record as we know it [1, 3, 4].
Interpreting a Site Like No Other
The fact that the bobkitten burial is unique makes it especially difficult to interpret. Perri and two other researchers studied this internment as well as eight other possible animal burials in Hopewell mounds in Illinois [4]. They concluded that the seven dogs were not deliberate burials [4]. A single roseate spoonbill was decapitated and buried beside two human bodies [4]. Only the bobcat was buried by itself, with the same sort of care taken with human bodies [4]. The skeleton bore no cut marks or other indications the animal was sacrificed [3]. Perri et al concluded that this is evidence that prehistoric Native Americans had a complex relationship with felids and may have tamed them [1, 3, 4].
The young age of the bobkitten suggests that villagers may have taken it from the wild, perhaps as an orphan, and raised it [1, 3]. Perri believes the shell-and-bone collar signifies that the bobkitten was a cherished pet [3]. If this bobcat was a tame pet, then the discovery is significant for the science and history of domestication [1, 3].
However, other archaeologists aren’t convinced. Melinda Zeder of the Smithsonian Institution points out that if Hopewell villagers regarded the bobcat as a pet, they probably would have buried it in the village as they did their pet dogs [3]. She believes the feline had spiritual significance for the Hopewell as a connection to the wild [3]. Even if this particular bobkitten was tamed and kept as a pet, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Hopewell tamed bobcats as a practice. For now, the find remains significant, but to an uncertain degree.
The Elizabeth site bobkitten was on display this year in the Illinois State Museum at Springfield’s temporary exhibit Walk on the Wild Side: The Story of Illinois Cats. See a virtual version of the exhibit here.
Works Cited
- American Association for the Advancement of Science. (2015, July 3). Ancient bobcat had human burial. Science, 349(6243), 10. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.349.6243.8
- Banyasz, M. G. (2010, January 22). Who were the Hopewell? Archaeology. https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/hopewell/who_were_hopewell.html
- Grimm, D. (2015, July 2). Ancient bobcat buried like a human being. Science Magazine. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/07/ancient-bobcat-buried-human-being
- Perri, A. R., Martin, T. J., and Farnsworth, K. B. (2015). A bobcat burial and other reported intentional animal burials from Illinois Hopewell mounds. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 40(3), 282-301. https://doi.org/10.1179/2327427115Y.0000000007 [Abstract]
Published August 8, 2021
Updated August 14, 2022
