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This PDF file of your paper in The Exploitation and Cultural Importance of Sea Mammals belongs to the publishers Oxbow Books and it is their copyright. As author you are licenced to make up to 50 offprints from it, but beyond that you may not publish it on the World Wide Web or in any other form. Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the International Council of Archaeozoology, Durham, August 2002 Series Editors: Umberto Albarella, Keith Dobney and Peter Rowley-Conwy An offprint from The Exploitation and Cultural Importance of Sea Mammals Edited by Gregory G. Monks © Oxbow Books 2005 ISBN 1 84217 126 7 Contents Preface ................................................................................................................................................................................ v Umberto Albarella, Keith Dobney and Peter Rowley-Conwy Foreword ...........................................................................................................................................................................vii Gregory G. Monks 1. From the Palaeolithic to the Present-Day: The Research Value of Marine Mammal Remains from Archaeological Contexts and the Uses of Contemporary Museum Reference Collections ................................. 1 Richard Sabin 2. Retreat and Resilience: Fur Seals and Human Settlement in New Zealand ........................................................... 6 Ian Smith 3. Archaeofaunal Insights on Pinniped-Human Interactions in the Northeastern Pacific ....................................... 19 D. Gifford-Gonzalez, S. D. Newsome, P. L. Koch, T. P. Guilderson, J. J. Snodgrass and R. K. Burton 4. Aleut Sea-Mammal Hunting: Ethnohistorical and Archaeological Evidence ...................................................... 39 Lucille Lewis Johnson 5. Dorset Palaeoeskimo Harp Seal Exploitation at Phillip's Garden (Eebi-1), Northwestern Newfoundland ........ 62 Lisa Hodgetts 6. Late Neolithic Seal Hunting in Southern Brittany: A Zooarchaeological Study of the Site of Er Yoh (Morbihan) .............................................................................. 77 K. V. Boyle 7. Human Exploitation and History of Seals in the Baltic during Late Holocene.................................................... 95 Jan Storå and Lembi Lõugas 8. Prehistoric Dolphin Hunting on Santa Cruz Island, California .......................................................................... 107 Michael A.Glassow 9. Cetaceans and Humans Beings at the Uttermost Part of America: A Lasting Relationship in Tierra Del Fuego ......................................................................................................... 121 Ernesto Luis Piana 10. An Oil Utility Index for Whale Bones ................................................................................................................... 138 Gregory G. Monks 11. A Whale of Problem? Zooarchaeology and Modern Whaling ............................................................................ 154 Jacqui Mulville 12. Discussion: Sea Mammals in Zooarchaeology AD 2002 ..................................................................................... 167 Gregory G. Monks 9th ICAZ Conference, DurhamArchaeofaunal 2002 Insights on Pinniped-Human Interactions 19 The Exploitation and Cultural Importance of Sea Mammals (ed. Greg Monks) pp. 19–38 3. Archaeofaunal Insights on Pinniped-Human Interactions in the Northeastern Pacific D. Gifford-Gonzalez, S. D. Newsome, P. L. Koch, T. P. Guilderson, J. J. Snodgrass and R. K. Burton Human exploitation of pinnipeds has considerable antiquity but shows increasing impacts on population numbers in the Holocene. Pinnipeds are a rich source of fat as well as protein. A few well-documented cases of regional extirpation of seals and sea lions by non-industrial peoples exist. The northeastern Pacific region, from southern California to Alaska, has yielded archaeological evidence for distributions and abundances of eared seals that differ markedly from historically documented biogeography. This is especially true of the northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus), among the most common pinnipeds in many archaeological sites from the Santa Barbara Channel area through to the Kodiak Islands. This paper reviews contemporary eared seal biogeography, evidence for the earlier timing and extent of occurrence of northern fur seals along the northeastern Pacific coast, zooarchaeological and isotopic evidence for their foraging and probable maintenance of rookeries in lower latitudes, and for their disappearance from the southernmost part of their ancient distribution well before European contact. It also reviews ongoing debates over the behavioral ecology of ancient fur seals and over humans’ role in contributing to their disappearance. Keywords: zooarchaeology, Pinnipeds, Otariidae, Callorhinus, paleobiogeography, isotopes, ecology Introduction seal (Phoca vitulina) and the northern elephant seal Human exploitation of pinnipeds goes back into the (Mirounga angustirostris), and four eared seal (otariid) Pleistocene (Klein and Cruz-Uribe 1996). Historically species, the Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), the documented, industrial-scale exploitation of seals and California sea lion (Zalophus californianus), the northern sea lions by humans has driven many such species to the fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus, henceforth, in the interests brink of extinction within decades of first cropping (Busch of concision, NFS) and the southern, or Guadalupe, fur 1985). Some well-documented cases show that prehistoric seal (Arctocephalus townsendi). The southern sea otter humans extirpated local populations of these marine (Enhydra lutris) is today found along the central to mammals within a few hundred years of colonizing a northern California coast, and the northern form ranges new area (Smith 1989, this volume). However, some from southeast Alaska through the Aleutians. The Steller archaeological records testify to sustained interactions sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) occurred in the southern over centuries to millennia, as with the Ozette Site on the Bering Sea and perhaps beyond prior to its extirpation by Olympic Peninsula of Washington State (Etnier 2002) or hunters in the 18th century (Anderson, 1995). Several of with pre-industrial human exploitation of pinnipeds in these species, notably the fur-bearing fur seals and sea arctic regions. otters and the oil-yielding elephant seal, nearly shared From the Santa Barbara Channel Islands to Alaska, the same fate, only to increase to considerable numbers the western coast of North America is home to six in the 20th century once they were protected by con- pinniped species whose fortunes have been altered servation legislation. through their interactions with humans over the Holocene. However, the pre-European archaeological evidence These comprise two phocid (true seal) species, the harbor from the northeastern Pacific Rim testifies to changes in 20 D. Gifford-Gonzalez, S. D. Newsome, P. L. Koch et al the abundance of taxa exploited by indigenous groups norm among otariids, with the possible exception of NFS after settlement of the region. Among the most striking under conditions of low female density (Riedman 1990). observations is that northern fur seal remains, once Contemporary California sea lions breed on islands and abundant in archaeological sites from the Santa Barbara remote mainland locales, while Guadalupe fur seals, NFS, Channel to northern California, drop out of the archaeo- and Steller sea lions breed exclusively on islands. All logical record around the beginning of the first millen- four species may migrate great distances outside their nium BP. In California, disappearance of NFS from all breeding seasons. Lyman (2003) has stressed that under- but island localities took place well before European standing human predation opportunities and costs re- contact, raising questions about the nature of indigenous quires that the behavior of each prey species be under- impacts on marine mammal communities. Farther north, stood, and, in the case of highly sexually dimorphic NFS and Steller sea lions continue into historic times. As marine mammals, this would include differences in male more details are emerging from ongoing research on the and female behaviors. The following section outlines key species along the Pacific coast of North America, it is differences among the eared seal species (see also Table becoming clear that indigenous groups followed a number 1). of different strategies, conditioned by latitudinal differ- ences in environmental parameters and subsistence- settlement strategies. Variations in Otariid Range, Reproduction, Ecology This paper reviews otariid ecology and biogeography, presents the evidence for the occurrence of NFS along Today, California sea lions are separated into three stocks the Pacific coast of North America in pre-European times, based on breeding location: the Channel Islands off and introduces the interpretive debates regarding the southern California; islands off western Baja California, disappearance of this taxon. It then presents results of and islands in the Gulf of California (Lowry et al. 1992). our own research, which is aimed at shedding more light The U.S. stock breeds almost exclusively on the Channel on nature of northern fur seal populations in central to Islands, but outside the breeding season males range as northern California and the circumstances under which far north as British Columbia. They haul-out in sexually NFS vanished from

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