Collagen Fingerprinting (ZooMS) and Caribbean Archaeological Fish Assemblages: Methodological Implications for Historical Fisheries Baselines and Conservation Applications

Summary

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

The Caribbean Sea is the most species-rich sea bordering the Atlantic. However, its high biodiversity and endemism face unprecedented anthropogenic threats. Although zooarchaeological data broadly indicate regionally variable Indigenous human impacts on fisheries in the past, elucidating outcomes of human impacts beyond class (e.g., Actinopterygii) is challenging due to the generally low taxonomic resolution of archaeological identifications. Here, we present collagen fingerprinting (Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry; ZooMS) as a method to overcome this challenge, applying it to 1,000 archaeological bone specimens identified morphologically as ray-finned fish (superclass Actinopterygii) from 13 circum-Caribbean sites spanning ca. 3150–300 yr BP. The method successfully identified collagen-containing samples (n = 720) to family (21%), genus (57%), and species (13%) level. This study represents the largest application of ZooMS to archaeological fish bones to date and advances future research through the identification of up to 20 collagen biomarkers for 45 taxa in 10 families and two orders. The high-resolution taxonomic identifications of archaeological bone that ZooMS can offer increase the relevance of ancient fisheries data to modern sustainability and conservation efforts in the Caribbean.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37109.0