Conceptual Frameworks for Nuu-chah-nulth Whaling

Summary

The Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) of Canada’s west coast are renown ethnographically for their cultural practice of open ocean whaling. Research in the last decade has shed light on the preferred species, the ecological reasons why whales were pursued, the antiquity of whaling, and the economic and social implications of whaling. Most of this research has been substantive and methodological in nature with only modest attention to theoretical issues. In this paper, I take a Human Behavioral Ecology perspective on Nuu-chah-nulth whaling and offer analyses of the practice from both optimal foraging and costly signaling perspectives. I conclude that these perspectives are complementary and provide a more complete understanding of the practice than would one or the other perspective alone.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Whales and Whaling: New Perspectives and Approaches for Documenting Long-Term Exploitation of Cetaceans

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15360