Published In

Archaeology in Oceania

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

4-24-2024

Subjects

Commercial fishing -- Marquesas Islands, Marquesas Islands (French Polynesia) -- Economic conditions

Abstract

Mass capture of small fishes with a variety of nets, traps, and weirs was widely practiced and economically important across East Polynesia at western contact. Archaeological research, however, has suggested these technologies were less important during the early settlement period and gained prominence over time. Several explanations have been proposed, including resource depression, changes in marine environments, and/or social and economic reorientations. In the Marquesas Islands, pelagic and offshore fishes were historically well represented in early assemblages relative to most Polynesian islands. Here we report on fishbone assemblages from Nuku Hiva Island that were recovered with fine mesh screens, identified using a wide range of skeletal elements, and analysed with morphometric methods. The Hakaea Beach results demonstrate that mass capture of small fishes was especially important at this locality and sustained over three early, successive occupations. These patterns may reflect the nature of the local fisheries, preferential use of high-return capture strategies in this reef-limited setting, and/or purposeful avoidance of ciguatera-prone fishes and a preference for less vulnerable fishes. Overall, our findings highlight geographic variation in early Marquesan fisheries and provide archaeological evidence that mass capture technologies had an important place in the maritime toolkits of the earliest East Polynesian fishers.

Rights

© 2024 The Authors. Archaeology in Oceania published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of University of Sydney. This is an open access article under the terms of the CreativeCommonsAttribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Locate the Document

https://doi.org/10.1002/arco.5320

DOI

10.1002/arco.5320

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/41808

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