Ancient Herring DNA from the Burton Acres Shell Midden (45KI437) and Pacific Herring Population Dynamics in the South Salish Sea

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pacific herring (Clupea harengus pallasi) is an important forage fish and staple food of many Northwest Coast indigenous peoples. Archaeological evidence throughout the south Salish Sea extends this ecological relationship back at least several millennia, but the presence of herring in archaeological deposits is often considered a single-dimensional seasonal indicator of past herring harvest. Modern fisheries studies define multiple herring stocks in the south Salish Sea, and recent genetic analysis of these stocks shed light on important aspects of population diversity and a much richer mosaic of different life histories between herring stocks. An on-going study of ancient DNA from archaeological specimens provides the first direct link between ancient and modern herring populations, including diachronic information over the past ca. 1,000 years at the Burton Acres shell midden on Vashon Island in the south Salish Sea. Our results suggest that Native American fisheries here primarily targeted herring populations spawning in late winter and early spring, although there also were a small number of samples originating from late-spawning populations. The Burton Acres site occupants accessed herring from multiple stocks within the diverse ecological portfolio of herring populations in the south Salish Sea.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• From Middens to Museums: Papers in Honor of Julie K. Stein

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23073