What Ancient DNA Can Reveal about the Ubiquitous Fish of the Northwest Coast: Salmon, Herring, and Rockfish

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fisheries are of fundamental importance to Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest of North America today and in the past. This presentation summarizes what ancient DNA has revealed/is revealing about Indigenous use of salmon, herring, and rockfish from different archaeological contexts along the Northwest Coast. In the case of salmon and rockfish, the main objective is species identification, with each species having different life histories and habitat preferences that shed light on human behavior and cultural practices. In the case of Pacific herring, the objective has been to document genetic diversity in a single species and compare ancient herring populations to those extant today. The larger goals of these projects are to understand the long-term historical ecologies of these fishes, and how archaeological data can illuminate pre-industrial patterns of fishing and fish processing. Understanding the genetics of pre-industrial fish may also inform management of the fish and fisheries to insure their survival into the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Zooarchaeology and Technology: Case Studies and Applications   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22867