Fishing and Ecological Resilience on California’s Channel Islands

Summary

On California's Channel Islands, the Chumash and Tongva relied on a relatively consistent repertoire of small and medium-bodied fish species over a period of more than 10,000 years. Throughout all time periods, the majority of fishes in the archaeological record could have been procured from the near shore waters of rocky intertidal, sandy beach, and kelp forest habitats. There is also limited evidence for offshore fishing for large pelagic fish later in time. I argue that the significant continuity in fish species caught through time reflects the abundance and resilience of fish in this highly productive marine ecosystem. Even during periods of lowered marine productivity small and medium-bodied fish were important contributions to islander diets, suggesting the fish resources around the islands were both abundant and stable through time. Various island assemblages show a dramatic increase in fishing alongside an increase in population density during the Late Holocene (4000 cal BP to present). This reflects the flexibility of subsistence fishing and its ability to be intensified to support larger populations. These results provide significant insights on the long-term adaptability of island fishers, and the role of rich marine fisheries in mitigating resource stress.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Re-evaluating the Marginality of California's Islands: Implications for Archaeological Interpretation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage