Four thousand years of western Torres Strait fishing in the Pacific-wide context
| Autor: | Ian J. McNiven, Marshall I. Weisler |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2016 |
| Předmět: |
010506 paleontology
Archeology geography.geographical_feature_category 060102 archaeology biology Serranidae Urogymnus asperrimus Fishing Context (language use) 06 humanities and the arts biology.organism_classification 01 natural sciences Fishery Oceanography Geography Elasmobranchii Peninsula Bodianus 0601 history and archaeology Parrotfish 0105 earth and related environmental sciences |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 7:764-774 |
| ISSN: | 2352-409X |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.05.016 |
| Popis: | Situated just north of Cape York Peninsula, Australia, the western Torres Strait islands reveals the earliest archaeological evidence for human occupation of Torres Strait at 9000 years ago on Badu. The first evidence for marine resource use of fish and turtle dates to ~ 7200 cal BP. We describe the salient information on marine exploitation from the ethnographic record, summarise the evidence for shark/ray and finfish exploitation from faunal assemblages excavated at six sites (dating to the past 4000 years) using similar standardised techniques, then compare the archaeological data for fishing to other sites across the tropical Pacific Islands. Using the number of identified specimens (NISP) for all six western Torres Strait assemblages (n = 1927), sharks and rays (taxa including Elasmobranchii, Myliobatidiformes or stingrays, four shark familes, and the porcupine ray or Urogymnus asperrimus ) accounted for 59.9% of all identified elements. The most abundant finfish were wrasses (Labridae, mostly Bodianus sp.) at 21.3%, parrotfish (Scaridae) 6.3% and groupers (Serranidae) at 2.5%. Seven families provided the remaining ~ 10%. Fish size was estimated by measuring the diameter of finfish and shark/ray vertebrae, length of emperor otoliths and widths of pharyngeal grinding clusters of parrotfish and wrasses. Live length was commonly |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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