Peering into the Past: Species Identification of Archaeological Pacific Salmon on Southwest Vancouver Island
Date
2023-07-04
Authors
Harrison, Freya
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Abstract
With anthropogenic climate change accelerating, environmental scientists, historical ecologists, and fisheries scientists alike have been asking questions about the future of our oceans. Understanding Pacific salmonid species composition at archaeological sites through very long-time horizons could provide answers to some of those questions. Archaeological studies of five species of northeast Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha, O. nerka, O. keta, O. tshawytscha, and O. kisutch) on the Northwest Coast have become increasingly important for understanding the historical distribution and exploitation of these significant cultural and ecological species. This is a regionally grounded study utilising archaeological salmon vertebrae collected from the Tseshaht village site of Kakmakimih on the southwest coast of British Columbia. Vertebral morphometric analysis has been proposed as an inexpensive, non-destructive supplementary method to other more established methods of identification (ancient DNA testing, and collagen peptide analysis [ZooMS] to infer or identify salmon species in archaeological assemblages. I apply the method of vertebral morphometric measurements to characterise and identify archaeological salmon species from vertebrae. I also investigate morphometric variability throughout the vertebral column and apply the morphometric measurements method to anatomically ordered vertebrae from modern salmonid specimens. Through data exploration and statistical analysis, I find that vertebral morphometric analysis has the potential to refine salmon species identifications in archaeological assemblages. This methodological approach contributes to the broader theme of evolution and ecology in anthropology by providing insight into human-non-human relationships in the past and present, and by reconstructing salmon populations that are so crucial to Indigenous fisheries.
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Keywords
Archaeology, Zooarchaeology, Indigenous Fisheries, Vertebra, Morphometrics, Morphology, Salmon