Hunted or Scavenged?: Investigating Acquisition of Dolphins and Porpoises at the Par-Tee Site Using Zooarchaeology and Ancient DNA Identifications

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The large quantity of archaeological cetacean remains recovered from the Par-Tee site allows insight into the potential hunting of smaller cetaceans. Using the Smithsonian’s Department of Vertebrate Zoology Marine Mammal Collection as a comparative, I identified four small cetacean species in the midden: harbor porpoise, Dall’s porpoise, bottlenose dolphin, and Pacific white-sided dolphin. To determine whether these small cetaceans were from hunted or stranded individuals, I compared the archaeological data to modern stranding data and was unable to reject stranding as a possibility for their occurrence in the midden. Analysis of the bones revealed no direct evidence of hunting or other modifications, even though ethnohistoric evidence suggests that hunting of small cetaceans is practiced globally, including on the Northwest Coast. Small cetaceans are oftentimes difficult to identify to species without a large, comprehensive comparative collection due to intraspecies variation and limited interspecies variation, so many zooarchaeological analyses lack a taxonomic identification beyond family. Due to different ecological roles and behaviors, species identification is important for understanding how humans may have potentially obtained this rich food and material resource. Toward this end, I confirm my species designations with ancient DNA and discuss the morphological characters which led to my initial identification.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24237