Local Trajectories, Regional Patterns, and Human Ecodynamics in Northern Māori Fisheries

Summary

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

Archaeological fishbone assemblages are the product of dynamic interactions between human fishers and fish stocks, both of which are enmeshed in broader, dynamic socioenvironmental contexts which are continually transformed and sustained by people and non-human entities. Understanding the history of fisheries therefore depends on careful consideration of multiple factors that can influence the trajectories of fish stocks and fishing practices. In this paper I evaluate how changes in climate, human harvest pressures, and Māori fishing methods may have shaped the human ecodynamics of Māori fisheries in northern North Island, Aotearoa / New Zealand, from the earliest Polynesian arrivals (ca. thirteenth century) to the start of the nineteenth century. Integrating paleoclimate records, fisheries biology, archaeological landscape histories, and archaeological assemblages of fish remains – while carefully controlling for recovery and identification biases where appropriate – demonstrates that Māori fishing practices were much more variable after 1500 cal CE in this region despite the apparent resilience of earlier fisheries. The available evidence ultimately suggests that multiple, historically contingent factors influenced local trajectories of northern Māori fisheries over time.

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): 36733.0