Collagen Fingerprinting and the Earliest Marine Mammal Hunting in North America

Courtney A Hofman,Andreanna J Welch,Leslie Reeder-Myers,Jon M Erlandson,Torben C Rick,Michael Buckley

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-28224-0

Abstract

The submersion of Late Pleistocene shorelines and poor organic preservation at many early archaeological sites obscure the earliest effects of humans on coastal resources in the Americas. We used collagen fingerprinting to identify bone fragments from middens at four California Channel Island sites that are among the oldest coastal sites in the Americas (~12,500-8,500 cal BP). We document Paleocoastal human predation of at least three marine mammal families/species, including northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), eared seals (Otariidae), and sea otters (Enhydra lutris). Otariids and elephant seals are abundant today along the Pacific Coast of North America, but elephant seals are rare in late Holocene (<1500 cal BP) archaeological sites. Our data support the hypotheses that: (1) marine mammals helped fuel the peopling of the Americas; (2) humans affected marine mammal biogeography millennia before the devastation caused by the historic fur and oil trade; and (3) the current abundance and distribution of recovering pinniped populations on the California Channel Islands may mirror a pre-human baseline.

Highlights

Recent archaeological, genomic, and paleoecological research identifies the Pacific Coast as one of the gateways for the peopling of the Americas[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
We seek to address this gap by using collagen fingerprinting to identify fragmentary marine mammal remains from Paleocoastal sites on Alta California’s Channel Islands to understand the nature of Paleocoastal marine mammal exploitation and how these data compare to late Holocene and modern marine mammal distributions and abundance
We performed collagen fingerprinting taxonomic identification of 20 unidentified marine mammal bone fragments from four Paleocoastal sites on the Channel Islands dated between ~12,500-8500 cal BP

Summary

Introduction

Genomic, and paleoecological research identifies the Pacific Coast as one of the gateways for the peopling of the Americas[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. California’s Channel Islands figure prominently in this research with ~13,00011,000 year old sites that contain human remains, sophisticated hunting tools, and diverse faunal assemblages[3,9,10] These island Paleocoastal sites have helped reframe debates about the nature of human use of coastal ecosystems along the Pacific Coast and around the world[11,12]. Known Late Pleistocene archaeological sites are often several kilometers from the submerged ancient shorelines, and people would likely have butchered carcasses near the shore rather than hauling them to interior camps[3] Due to these processing and transport issues, as well as fragmentation of faunal remains at some sites, potential marine mammal bones are often undiagnostic fragments that could be from pinnipeds, sea otters, or cetaceans.

Methods

Results

Conclusion