Northern elephant seals (NES hereafter, Mirounga angustirostris) were nearly driven to extinction by commercial and recreational hunters during the nineteenth century fur and oil trade (Scammon, 1874: 119; Stewart et al., 1994). Despite limited genetic diversity (Bonnell and Selander, 1972; Weber et al., 2000, 2004), NES along North America's Pacific Coast are now thriving, with some 124 000 animals in the California stock alone (Carretta et al., 2009: 28). The recovery of NES populations is one of the success stories of marine conservation, demonstrating resilience despite decades of intensive slaughter (Stewart et al., 1994). Because of rapid decimation from commercial hunting, little is known about NES prior to the mid-nineteenth century, however, leaving a substantial gap in our understanding of their natural history, biogeography, and historical ecology. In this paper, we synthesize all known occurrences of NES in northeastern Pacific Coast archaeological sites, including analysis of previously reported materials and new unpublished data (Figure 1). Other archaeological studies of seal and sea lion (pinniped) remains from Pacific Coast archaeological sites have noted the dearth of NES relative to other pinnipeds (e.g. Hildebrandt and Jones, 2002; Lyman, 2011). Our study is the first to focus solely on NES and to place these data within the context of ancient DNA analyses and modern behavioral data. Similar to earlier archaeological studies of northeastern Pacific pinnipeds (
ΔR values have been calculated based on offsets in radiocarbon values exhibited in a series of stratigraphically paired charcoal and marine shell values, ranging from about 300 to 10,000 BP, excavated from archaeological sites on Cedros Island, Baja California, Mexico. Based on this data, there appears to be the equivalent of about an 800-yr range in inferred ΔR values (-400 to 400 yr) exhibited in Holocene-age marine shells from this portion of the central Baja California coast.
While the North American archaeological record signals the presence of early humans along the northeastern Pacific coast by the Late Pleistocene, we know little about the technological systems employed by these coastally oriented colonizing groups. We here report the discovery of the earliest unequivocal evidence for the use and manufacture of shell fishhooks in the western hemisphere. Four single-piece shell fishhooks dating to the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene transition (between ~11,300 and 10,700 cal B.P.) have been excavated on Isla Cedros, Baja California, Mexico. One hook is directly dated at 9495 ± 25 B.P. with a marine reservoir–corrected age of 11,165–9185 cal B.P. Radiocarbon ages associated with three other shell fishhooks range between 8900 ± 25 B.P. and 10,415 ± 25 B.P, while median ages for the earliest contexts confirm occupation of the island by at least 12,600–12,000 cal B.P. The stratigraphic levels from which the fishhooks were recovered contained a diverse assemblage of fish remains, including deepwater species, indicative of boat use. Thus, some of the earliest known inhabitants of the Pacific coast of the Americas employed shell hook and line technology for offshore marine fishing at least by the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, if not earlier.
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