Late Holocene Coastal Intensification, Mass Harvest Fishing, and the Historical Ecology of Marine Estuaries: The View from the Manila Site (CA-HUM-321), Humboldt Bay, Northwestern Alta California

Abstract

The Manila site (CA-HUM-321) is a stratified prehistoric midden site with a long history of use by the Wiyot people. The site is located on Humboldt Bay on the North Coast of California, a major estuary system of the Pacific Northwest, and is unique for its excellent preservation, depth and integrity of deposits, and its strategic location, with ready access to both open coast and estuarine resources. In this article, we report our constituent analysis of excavated materials—the first study of its kind from Humboldt Bay—involving identification and quantification of dietary and material residues, including shellfish, fish, bird, and mammal bone, paleoethnobotanical seeds and wood, and lithics. The research establishes that the site dates to over 1,300 cal BP—predating deposits excavated by Loud (1918) at Tuluwat village on Gunther (Indian) Island (CA-HUM-67) by several hundred years—as well as the earliest evidence to date of the mass harvest of fish (especially smelt) and intensive shellfish procurement on the North Coast of California. The study contributes to our understanding of the historical ecology of northern California estuaries and provides insight into the emergence of bulk storage, mass capture techniques, and the development of plank house villages in the region.