Midden volume, harvested fish biomass, and pre-contact minimum population estimates for Nuu-chah-nulth Territories in Barkley Sound
| dc.contributor.author | Gustas, Robert | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Mackie, Quentin | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | McKechnie, Iain | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-01-03T19:58:58Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-01-03T19:58:58Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Anthropology | |
| dc.degree.level | Doctor of Philosophy PhD | |
| dc.description.abstract | Coastal shell midden deposits are a quintessential element of the archaeological record on the Pacific Northwest Coast recording thousands of years of daily life. This dissertation develops a methodology which contributes to understandings of pre-contact Indigenous demographics and marine resource use in Nuu-chah-nulth Territories in Barkley Sound, British Columbia, Canada. This dissertation combines spatial analysis, zooarchaeology, and human metabolic requirements to provide estimates of the volume of midden sites, the harvested fish that they contain, and the minimum local human population that could have been supported from these fish. These archaeologically derived estimates of population and biomass are grounded in a computationally conservative theoretical framework which draws on archaeological data and minimizes the use of analogy and historical comparison. I use these models to estimate that known Barkley Sound shell midden sites contain 241,253 m3 (± 21,712 m3) of sediment and are features on par in size with better known monumental sites in the Americas. This estimate of annual marine resource harvests represents approximately 10% of modern fisheries catches and indicates that nearly 1.2 billion fish were harvested by Indigenous fishers over the last three millennia. The protein rich calories contained in midden fish biomass would be sufficient to support a population of nearly 1,000 individuals per day for this time period. This research offers a framework for creating volume, biomass, and ultimately population estimates in other coastal sites and has important implications for governance and natural resource policy in Indigenous communities especially for the Tseshaht, Toquaht, Uchuklesaht, Ucluelet, and Huu-ay-aht peoples who inhabited this area for millennia. | |
| dc.description.embargo | 2025-12-10 | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.bibliographicCitation | Gustas, Robert H., Iain McKechnie, Quentin Mackie, and Chris Darimont 2022 Estimating Volumes of Coastal Shell Midden Sites Using Geometric Solids: An Example from Tseshaht Territory, Western Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Advances in Archaeological Practice 10(2):200–214. 10.1017/aap.2022.9. | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/20908 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.subject | Indigenous Demography | |
| dc.subject | Shell Middens | |
| dc.subject | Coastal Archaeology | |
| dc.subject | Northwest Coast | |
| dc.subject | Fisheries Biomass | |
| dc.subject | Diet | |
| dc.subject | Geomatics | |
| dc.subject | Zooarchaeology | |
| dc.subject | Historical Ecology | |
| dc.subject | Geospatial methods | |
| dc.subject | GIS | |
| dc.subject | 3D Modelling | |
| dc.title | Midden volume, harvested fish biomass, and pre-contact minimum population estimates for Nuu-chah-nulth Territories in Barkley Sound | |
| dc.type | Thesis |