Tracing the Human Exploitation of Salmonids on the Pacific Coast of North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "HumAnE Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pacific salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) are important economic and subsistence resources for contemporary and past indigenous peoples of the Pacific coast of North America. The seven recognised Oncorhynchus species each occupy different ecological niches and exhibit diversity in seasonal spawning and migratory behaviours. Although salmonid remains are ubiquitous at archaeological sites from California to Alaska, their remains are notoriously difficult to identify to species level using traditional zooarchaeological techniques. This prevents archaeologists from fully reconstructing human subsistence strategies, which were influenced by the seasonal availabilities of different species. While ancient DNA analyses have successfully separated species, these methods are destructive and cost-prohibitive. Geometric morphometrics (GMM) has proven successful in capturing subtle biological variations of closely related species and represents a cheaper and non-destructive alternative for the identification of archaeological Oncorhynchus species. Initial results, using modern wild specimens of known species as reference, verified by DNA analysis and ZooMS, demonstrate that GMM is effective in identifying certain species of Oncorhynchus with a high level of confidence. These results will aid in the refinement of past subsistence strategies surrounding this keystone species, and provide a deep-time perspective on both pre-industrial population baselines and native ranges for modern conservation policy and climate change studies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24153