Cultural complexity and resource intensification on Kodiak Island, Alaska
Models created by archaeologists to explain the development of cultural complexity on the north Pacific coast frequently pose resource intensification, especially of salmon, as a possible cause. However, whether or not intensification actually occurred or why it might arise in the first place are usually left unexplored. In this dissertation, I use the Kodiak archipelago as a case study to rigorously explore these issues. I use models from optimal foraging theory to develop predictions to test the hypotheses that prehistoric intensification of fish occurred as well as depression of certain prey populations. Additionally, I test the hypothesis that intensification had chronological priority over an increase in cultural complexity.Data from four prehistoric faunal assemblages, three of which were analyzed for this dissertation, are used to test the hypotheses. Bones from Rice Ridge, Crag Point, Uyak and Settlement Point indicate a shift from a focus on sea mammals during the Ocean Bay period to greater use of marine fish and salmon during the later Kachemak and Koniag periods.According to my model, resource intensification implies a greater use of prey with low net energetic returns over time. I examine the relative taxonomic abundance of sea mammals, marine fish, salmon, and terrestrial mammals within and between sites. Significant declines in ratios of sea mammals to both marine fish and salmon before the advent of mass-harvesting technology suggests a decline in foraging efficiency and strongly supports the intensification hypothesis as well as the hypothesis that intensification occurred before the increase in cultural complexity that occurred during the Kachemak and Koniag periods.To test the hypothesis that resource depression of certain prey populations occurred, I use several lines of evidence. Changes in relative skeletal abundance of sea mammal bones suggest hunters were traveling farther afield to access sea mammals during the Ocean Bay period. Cut-marked bones become more abundant over time, inferred as an increase in butchering intensity. Changes in the age structures of sea otter, harbor seals, and Pacific cod inferred from their remains indicate that these populations were being negatively impacted by some agent, possibly human foraging activity or changes in paleoclimate.
- Anthropology