Zooarchaeological Analysis of Fishing Strategies at Rio Chico, Ecuador (OMJPLP-170)

Summary

The Rio Chico site was occupied almost continuously for 5000 years (ca. 3500 B.C.E. to 1532 C.E.) in a region of coastal South America that is heavily influenced by climatic events such as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Evidence suggests that occupants of Rio Chico were heavily dependent on marine resources. The fishing strategies utilized at Rio Chico sustained the community over time, which allowed for the long-term development of an economy based on the Spondylus trade. This combination of climatic volatility, dependence on ocean resources, and occupation history provides an opportunity to study coastal resource usage over a long temporal span. This poster presents the results of a zooarchaeological analysis of a sample of faunal remains from the Florida Atlantic University (FAU) field school excavations conducted in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2003. All remains were identified to the class level and a subset of this sample was identified to the family level. These identifications serve as the basis of this analysis. This analysis provides a foundation for further research to compare a coastal and an inland site in Ecuador, which will contribute to an understanding of the relationship between coastal and inland sites during times of environmental stress.

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): 22233