A Chronological Multisite Analysis of Shellfish Gathering Strategies in the King Range National Conservation Area, Northwest California

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The King Range National Conservation Area (KRNCA), located in southern Humboldt County, California, has been of particular interest to archaeologists since the 1970s. Early archaeological investigations in the KRNCA were crucial for developing regional North Coast chronologies and have yielded some of the oldest coastal sites north of San Francisco Bay. Although these investigations have provided a foundation of initial site descriptions and preliminary shellfish analyses, there is room for further analyses by compiling shellfish data from the individual investigations and analyzing variable shellfish gathering strategies through time (~3,000 years–present). A temporal, multisite analytical approach has the potential to help understand long-term changes in shellfish gathering strategies as they may relate to the effects of climate change on coastal resource abundance or Indigenous management practices and adaptive strategies. In this study, I compile existing radiocarbon dates and shellfish remains from coastal sites in the KRNCA to assess diachronic trends in shellfish use through time. The results of this study may indicate a complex pattern of shellfish gathering strategies consistent with a geographically and culturally diverse region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36422.0