This project employs archaeological and paleoenvironmental data to assess the effects of late Holocene climate change on resource availability, and will test the effects of this availability on prehistoric fisheries. Recent research by Dr. Bruce Finney (Finney et al. 2002) shows that salmon abundance in the northeastern Pacific Ocean has fluctuated dramatically over the last 2200 years due to climate change, and the research proposed here will assess the effects of these fluctuations on human foraging strategies. Within the context of foraging theory, this project will test whether people altered their foraging strategies to accommodate climate change and resource fluctuation by moving their fisheries from the riverine to the marine environment. To test this hypothesis, several lines of evidence from Kodiak Island, Alaska will be utilized: a) stable oxygen isotopes extracted from fish otoliths will be used to reconstruct the paleoenvironment; b) archaeological faunal materials will be analyzed to test for changes in foraging focus; and c) salmon abundance data from the last 2200 years will be used as a control for the paleoenvironmental and archaeological data.
The significance of this project lies in its unique archaeological perspective, and the potential of archaeological data to contribute to an understanding of the larger, long-term processes affecting the marine environment, fish ecology, human-environmental interaction and climate change, and Native Alaskan fisheries.
