Ichthyoarchaeological Analysis of ScMo-350 on Mo’orea, French Polynesia

Summary

ScMo-350 is located on Mo’orea Island, northwest of Tahiti in French Polynesia. Our ichthyoarchaeological analyses assess which fish taxa were utilized by the pre-contact Ma’ohi, and how those taxa may have changed over time. Our diachronic approach investigates fishing activities over a c. 1,000 year period, between AD 900-1800. We broadly divided this beach ridge site into four excavation blocks to aid in spatial analyses of the recovered artifacts. Fish specimens were heavily concentrated in Blocks 2 and 3, correlating to areas of the site with high frequencies of fishhook manufacturing blanks. This demonstrates differential areas of activity across the site. The manufacture of fishing technology (fishhooks, trolling lures, etc.) was kept separate from fish butchery, and ethnographic evidence suggests that these activities were conducted along gendered divisions of labor with men fishing and women processing those fish. However, these binary categorizations are not as starkly defined as often presented. Mo’orea had seasonal shifts in marine resource availability prompting communal fishing, activities that complicate simplistic traditional narratives. Our poster focuses on the spatial and temporal analysis of fish specimens at ScMo-350 and situates these data compared to sites on nearby islands such as Maupiti in the Leeward Society Islands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21821