Open Ocean Fisheries of Indigenous California: Origins and Technological Inferences

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Pelagic fishing entails substantial risks and investments in fishing equipment, including sturdy boats, paddles, hooks, lines, nets, and spears. In the context of Indigenous California, this fishing practice has been linked to population growth and the evolution of fishing technologies over the past 1,500 years. However, in local environments such as Santa Catalina Island, communities engaged in open ocean fishing and successfully captured large-bodied fish, like tuna, several millennia earlier in history. Through an interdisciplinary approach encompassing zooarchaeology, geographic information systems (GIS), historical documents, ethnographic accounts, and contemporary fishery data, this study examines global tuna fishing methods. The aim is to gain deeper insights into the technologies and strategies utilized by Indigenous islanders. By employing osteometry, I estimate body sizes to better comprehend fishing capabilities before the advent of sewn-plank canoes and single-piece shell fishhooks. The results demonstrate that the earliest evidence for large-bodied, pelagic fishing began on the southern Channel Islands ca. 5,000 years ago and gives new insight on Indigenous watercrafts and fishing practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Interdisciplinary Approaches in Zooarchaeology: Addressing Big Questions with Ancient Animals   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38234.0