Intertidal coastal areas are highly reliable and productive environments, but they are affected disproportionately by changing sea levels, especially in recently-deglaciated high-latitude regions. In Southeast Alaska, ancient humans relied on intertidal ecosystems throughout the Holocene, but they had to contend with rapidly fluctuating sea levels, as well as changing cultural practices. This paper examines humans’ evolving relationship with the intertidal landscape of Labouchere Bay starting at the end of the last glacial period. The rapid postglacial marine transgression was associated with use of the shoreline for temporary encampments. The first evidence for long-term systematic shellfish exploitation coincided with the maximum highstand during the early Holocene, c. 9,500 calendar years ago. As the sea level gradually receded due to terrestrial subsidence throughout the middle and late Holocene (c. 7,000 - 2,500 years ago), shellfish harvesting activity at Labouchere Bay increased in intensity. Although the early occupation of Labouchere Bay was influenced heavily by changing sea level, later occupation seems to have been influenced more by cultural factors coinciding with the regional emergence of clan-oriented hierarchical labor allocation.

Current representations of late Pleistocene to early Holocene sea-level change are coarse representations and lack depictions of human experiences. On the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, there was up to 176 m of sea-level rise, from -165 m to 11 m, in approximately 7000 years: an enormous change. Sea-level changes would have been both slow and punctuated, and these dramatic changes would have affected how the people hunted, fish, gathered, and lived. Biological refugia and archaeological evidence indicate that people were present by at least 12,000 cal BP, and human migration through the coastal region into the Americas may have been ongoing. The transforming environmental and landscape reconstructions will be used to hypothesize the local environmental changes at specific locations and sea levels at the end of the Pleistocene.

S’Gaan Kinghlas / Supernatural One Looking Outward / is the traditional Haida of the Bowie Seamount, a 3000 m tall volcanic pinnacle whose peak is 20 m below surface. Located 100 nautical miles (180 km) west of Haida Gwaii the southernmost peak in the Kodiak-Bowie chain. The Haida are remarkable maritime oriented people, renowned seafarers who used ocean-going canoes in Hecate Strait, venturing north to Alaska and south to Washington State for trade and raiding. They were adept fishers of resources, including whales, porpoise, and sea-lion. Still, without modern technology, how would they know of something submerged far out into the open ocean?
    Possibly the seamount was exposed during the last ice age duringlower sea levels when the coastal forebulge was in effect. Haida ancestors visited this island to exploit pelagic resources and possibly retrieve fine grained volcanic material for stone tool production. Video from previous explorations show a landscape with archaeological potential, including terraced beaches and rock overhangs that could have served as shelter. I am developing a proposal to undertake further underwater survey of the seamount using ROV technology and a technical scuba divers to examine areas of high potential for archaeological remains.
 

Zooarchaeological data recovered from shell midden sites are an important focus for coastal archaeology globally. These cultural deposits contain complex records of everyday life and can include millennia of Indigenous fish harvests. In our study area fish represent the most numerous vertebrate skeletal elements in shell middens, yet the composition and absolute quantity of fish contained in these coastal settlement sites is poorly resolved. Here we integrate zooarchaeological bone counts with geospatial data to derive estimates of the total amount of fish biomass represented in five shell midden sites. This approach links the volume of sediments with MNI counts and fish body mass estimates to derive harvested fish biomass. Across the five sites examined in our study area, our geospatial models calculate site volumes ranging from 846-21,833 m³ and our zooarchaeological data suggest that between 3,000-7,000 fish are present per m³ with larger-bodied fish contributing proportionally higher biomass than MNI counts might suggest. We estimate these five sites contain 48,100 m³ of shell midden and 126,000- 243,000.metric tons of harvested fish biomass spanning 4,500 years. These quantitative estimates add detail to the role which ancient Indigenous fisheries had in the marine historical ecology of the North Pacific.

The use of zooarchaeological data to address ecological questions is an emerging subfield in anthropology. This study examines a 3,000-year-record of Indigenous resource use from a coastal village west of Vancouver Island. Persistent habitation over millennia by Indigenous Peoples in this region created a vast archive of ecological information regarding past environments and the cultural selectivity of harvesting practices. The Kakmakimilh Archaeological project is a joint initiative between Tseshaht First Nation, Bamfield Marine Science Centre, Parks Canada and the University of Victoria which aids Tseshaht in reclaiming their history. I participated in this project in 2021 and examined the harvest profiles of two species of shellfish (Red Turban snails, California mussels) and two fish genera (Greenling,  Rockfish) using established regressions and caliper measurements. In this presentation, I examine trends in fish and shellfish size as a record of human cultural practices—including community social dynamics (e.g., harvesting areas by household) and fishing practices (e.g., preferential fishing for smaller fish in order to reduce impact). I explore these archaeological data to consider the incidence of preferential seafood harvesting and the impacts on these marine species that human and nonhuman predators, such as sea otters, may have had.