The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries

"The goals of this volume are to examine and fill a knowledge gap in the anthropology and history of regional fisheries and their cultures along the northern Pacific coast of North America. . . . [The editors] hope that the creation of a baseline understanding of the complexities of fisheries through time, space, and cultural uses will yield the recognition that ancient data are relevant to the present and future of fisheries management—particularly the ways in which climate change may provoke fine-scale responses in the fisheries. . . . Recommended."
—CHOICE

"The goals of the volume are broad but manageable. . . . [it] will be valuable to readers who are interested in the latest methods of extracting data from archaeological fishbone, who are interested in a current summary of data on precontact North Pacific fisheries and fish (also useful for fisheries management), and for those interested in the evolution of fisheries and fish in the North Pacific."
—American Antiquity

"The contributions to this volume, though just a sampling of the work currently being conducted around the eastern North Pacific, highlight the depth and range of approaches that characterize the state-of-the-art in the zooarchaeological analysis of fish remains."
—Alaska Journal of Anthropology

"This volume provides important insights for all archaeologists working along the north Pacific coast."
—Canadian Journal of Archaeology

"[An] outstanding collection of articles that point the way forward in collaborative interdisciplinary marine historical ecology in the North Atlantic. Separately these volumes have great regional significance in demonstrating the importance of past to present in marine resource management. Together they may serve notice that maritime historical ecology has come of age and should be recognized as global-change science."
—International Journal of Nautical Archaeology

For thousands of years, fisheries were crucial to the sustenance of the First Peoples of the Pacific Coast. Yet the effects of human settlement have left us with a woefully incomplete understanding of their histories before the industrial era. Covering Alaska, British Columbia, and Puget Sound, The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries illustrates how the archaeological record reveals new information about ancient ways of life and the histories of key species. Individual chapters cover salmon and a number of lesser-known species abundant in archaeological sites, including pacific cod, herring, rockfish, eulachon, and hake. In turn, this ecological history informs suggestions for sustainable fishing in today’s rapidly changing environment.