Speaker: Dr. Robert Gustus
Coastal shell midden deposits are a quintessential element of the archaeological record on the Pacific Northwest Coast recording thousands of years of daily life. Here I present new research 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 research 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 inductive theoretical framework which draws on archaeological data and minimizes the use of analogy and historical comparison. I show that known Barkley Sound shell midden sites comprise over 100,000 m3 of sediment representing the harvesting of over 1,000,000,000 fish by Indigenous fishers. The calories derived from these fish would be sufficient to support a population of nearly 1,000 individuals per day over the last three millennia. This research offers a framework for creating volume, biomass, and ultimately population estimates in other coastal sites globally and has important implications for governance and natural resource policy in Indigenous communities.
NOTE THE NEW LOCATION AT THE STRATHCONA MUSEUM AND ARCHIVE IN SHERWOOD PARK.