Importation of Salted Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) into San Francisco, California during the Gold Rush-Era (ca. 1849-1855)

Summary

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

Records from the Gold Rush San Francisco Bay Area indicate that food items were imported to offset the depletion of once abundant wild food sources. Fish were a large part of human diets during the Gold Rush, and while we know that Pacific cod (Gadus macrocephalus) were fished later in the 19th century, it is unclear whether they were fished during the Gold Rush era due to difficulty in commercially capturing these fish at the depths at which they reside. We analyzed vertebrae recovered from this era to determine whether Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) were important to offset food scarcity. Ancient DNA methods were used to extract and analyze DNA from five vertebrae. A region of the mitochondrial genome known to distinguish Pacific cod from Atlantic cod was then amplified, and the products were sequenced. Four of the five samples were identified as Atlantic Cod, while the fifth sample was only identifiable to the genus level (Gadus spp.), suggesting that this species of fish was, in fact, imported to the San Francisco Bay Area during the Gold Rush era.

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): 24893