A Fish-Focused Menu: An Interdisciplinary Reconstruction of Precontact (1792 CE) Tsleil-Waututh Diets

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Food is more than simply fuel; it is one of the most significant ways in which humans connect with each other, within and across communities, and to their environments and homelands. This research is grounded at təmtəmíxʷtən, a large ancestral village site in what is now known as Burrard Inlet, British Columbia, Canada, in the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of Tsleil-Waututh Nation. We draw on the archaeological record, Tsleil-Waututh oral histories, and testimony, fisheries ecology, and historical records to build an estimated ancestral diet. We estimate the maximum carrying capacity of Burrard Inlet before European contact, meaning the number of people the Inlet could sustain over generations without causing environmental or species degradation. Based on prior work, we assume a high protein diet that is primarily (90%–100%) from marine and intertidal sources. We consider the caloric needs of adults, children, elders, and those who are pregnant or lactating. Finally, we consider the variation in the edible yield from different animal species, and their relationships in the food web. We use a precontact model of the Inlet, built using fisheries modeling software Ecopath (EwE), to test the diet and determine if it would have been sustainable over the long term.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Cultivating Food, Land, and Communities

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40398.0