Perspectives on global fishing technologies, material culture and practices in the past

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Fishing Technologies: Exploring Manufacturing Techniques and Styles, Traditions, Exchange, Migration and More" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fishing implies cultural practices that consider social, economic and ecological factors which can be explored through the study of the associated tool kits. The contexts of initial production and use of fishing technologies, how they spread, adapted, and changed through time in various parts of the world reflect the deep technological and ecological knowledge of island and coastal dwelling peoples. This paper seeks to provide a synthesis of the current understanding of fishing related technologies from around the world as context for the symposium and as a point of departure for discussion on the state of the art and future avenues of research concerning these topics. We provide a summary of the chronologies and primary types of fishing tackle and equipment that is known from various coastal regions in deep time as revealed through the archaeological record with the aim of a comparative perspective about fishing practices and approaches including the origins and evolution of various fishing technologies (or lack thereof when none were needed to capture certain types of fish) and the influences of fishing on artisanal societies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Fishing Technologies: Exploring Manufacturing Techniques and Styles, Traditions, Exchange, Migration and More

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52527