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• 1. [Article] Age Determination of Modern and Archaeological Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytcha) Using Vertebrae

  Incremental growth rings in X-rays of salmon vertebrae have been used since the 1980s to age Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) remains from archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest. These age estimates, ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Age Determination of Modern and Archaeological Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytcha) Using Vertebrae Author: Hofkamp, Anthony Raymond Year: 2015 Incremental growth rings in X-rays of salmon vertebrae have been used since the 1980s to age Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) remains from archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest. These age estimates, paired with generalized life history patterns, have been used to determine salmon species, season of capture and in turn season of site occupation. This approach relies on a variety of assumptions, the most fundamental of which is that rings represent true years. Archaeologists using vertebral age determination techniques have failed to adequately test this assumption and present their methodologies. This thesis assesses the validity of using incremental growth structures in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) vertebrae to determine the age at death of fish represented in archaeological sites. This project develops criteria and a protocol for the identification of true annuli and tests these identifications on a collection of modern Chinook salmon of known age. Finally, this protocol is applied to archaeological remains of Chinook from Cathlapotle (45CL1). Three collections of modern known age fish (N=121) were used to evaluate and test approaches to aging Chinook salmon with vertebrae. These collections contained juvenile and adult Chinook from throughout Washington and Oregon. I evaluated a variety of methods for viewing rings including magnified surface images, X-ray images and thin sections to determine which is the most accurate, reliable and efficient, also considering the extent of specimen destruction. Rings visible in X-rays were found to reflect the internal structure of vertebrae rather than annular growth. The number of these internal walls did not correspond to the known ages of fish and are therefore not true annuli. Criteria previously described by salmon fisheries biologist were used to isolate annuli (on the centrum surface) on the Hanford reach collection (N=46). In a test for accuracy 39 (85%) were aged correctly. In a test of reliability utilizing five additional readers all but 14 cases showed discrepancies among readers. Results of the test of reliability were not as successful as other researchers in fisheries biology but given the high accuracy rate the method remains valid. The final goal of this project was to determine the feasibility of applying the surface ring method of age determination to archaeological collections. Archaeological salmon vertebrae from Cathlapotle (45CL1) on the lower Columbia River, Washington state were utilized. One hundred salmon vertebrae were selected and classified to species according to Huber et al. (2011); 89 were identified as Chinook. Of these, 39 had sufficient preservation of the surface to view and interpret incremental rings. Three ages were identified 3, 4 and 5 year olds. This ageing protocol can be applied to archaeological Chinook salmon vertebrae to estimate age of ancient Chinook salmon. Additional work is needed on other salmon species to demonstrate the methods validity across all salmonid species. This analysis has great potential for modeling salmon paleo-life history by contributing data from salmon populations prior to the major impacts of the 19th and 20th century. This is particularly valuable for salmon conservation because information on size, the timing and duration of freshwater emigration as well as the age of spawning and death is critical to the management of hatchery and wild salmon populations. Title: Age Determination of Modern and Archaeological Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytcha) Using Vertebrae Author: Hofkamp, Anthony Raymond Year: 2015 Incremental growth rings in X-rays of salmon vertebrae have been used since the 1980s to age Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) remains from archaeological sites in the Pacific Northwest. These age estimates, paired with generalized life history patterns, have been used to determine salmon species, season of capture and in turn season of site occupation. This approach relies on a variety of assumptions, the most fundamental of which is that rings represent true years. Archaeologists using vertebral age determination techniques have failed to adequately test this assumption and present their methodologies. This thesis assesses the validity of using incremental growth structures in Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) vertebrae to determine the age at death of fish represented in archaeological sites. This project develops criteria and a protocol for the identification of true annuli and tests these identifications on a collection of modern Chinook salmon of known age. Finally, this protocol is applied to archaeological remains of Chinook from Cathlapotle (45CL1). Three collections of modern known age fish (N=121) were used to evaluate and test approaches to aging Chinook salmon with vertebrae. These collections contained juvenile and adult Chinook from throughout Washington and Oregon. I evaluated a variety of methods for viewing rings including magnified surface images, X-ray images and thin sections to determine which is the most accurate, reliable and efficient, also considering the extent of specimen destruction. Rings visible in X-rays were found to reflect the internal structure of vertebrae rather than annular growth. The number of these internal walls did not correspond to the known ages of fish and are therefore not true annuli. Criteria previously described by salmon fisheries biologist were used to isolate annuli (on the centrum surface) on the Hanford reach collection (N=46). In a test for accuracy 39 (85%) were aged correctly. In a test of reliability utilizing five additional readers all but 14 cases showed discrepancies among readers. Results of the test of reliability were not as successful as other researchers in fisheries biology but given the high accuracy rate the method remains valid. The final goal of this project was to determine the feasibility of applying the surface ring method of age determination to archaeological collections. Archaeological salmon vertebrae from Cathlapotle (45CL1) on the lower Columbia River, Washington state were utilized. One hundred salmon vertebrae were selected and classified to species according to Huber et al. (2011); 89 were identified as Chinook. Of these, 39 had sufficient preservation of the surface to view and interpret incremental rings. Three ages were identified 3, 4 and 5 year olds. This ageing protocol can be applied to archaeological Chinook salmon vertebrae to estimate age of ancient Chinook salmon. Additional work is needed on other salmon species to demonstrate the methods validity across all salmonid species. This analysis has great potential for modeling salmon paleo-life history by contributing data from salmon populations prior to the major impacts of the 19th and 20th century. This is particularly valuable for salmon conservation because information on size, the timing and duration of freshwater emigration as well as the age of spawning and death is critical to the management of hatchery and wild salmon populations. Close

• 2. [Article] Archaeological Evidence for Resilience of Pacific Northwest Salmon Populations and the Socioecological System Over the Last ~7,500 Years

  Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Archaeological Evidence for Resilience of Pacific Northwest Salmon Populations and the Socioecological System Over the Last ~7,500 Years Author: Campbell, Sarah K., Butler, Virginia L. Year: 2010 Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides an alternative conceptual view of the potential for sustainable harvests and can suggest possible social mechanisms for managing human behavior. Review of the ~7,500-year-long fish bone record from two subregions of the Pacific Northwest shows remarkable stability in salmon use. As major changes in the ecological and social system occurred over this lengthy period, persistence in the fishery is not due simply to a lack of perturbation, but rather indicates resilience in the ecological--human system. Of several factors possibly contributing to resilience, low human population size and harvesting pressure, habitat enhancement, and suppression of competing predators do not appear to be of major importance. Flexible resource use, including human use of a range of local resources, many of which are linked in a food web with salmon, likely contributed to resilience. Most important were the beliefs and social institutions (including ownership, regulation, rituals, and monitoring) that placed restraints on salmon use as a common pool resource. In contrast, only a small fraction of our modern society relies economically on or has direct interaction with the fish, which limits our concern and willingness to fundamentally change behaviors that contribute to habitat degradation and loss, the main challenges facing salmon populations today. Salmon recovery efforts may benefit substantially from investing more resources into establishing links between community groups and actual fish populations, which would create a sense of proprietorship, one of the keys to resilience in the indigenous salmon fishery. Title: Archaeological Evidence for Resilience of Pacific Northwest Salmon Populations and the Socioecological System Over the Last ~7,500 Years Author: Campbell, Sarah K., Butler, Virginia L. Year: 2010 Archaeological data on the long history of interaction between indigenous people and salmon have rarely been applied to conservation management. When joined with ethnohistoric records, archaeology provides an alternative conceptual view of the potential for sustainable harvests and can suggest possible social mechanisms for managing human behavior. Review of the ~7,500-year-long fish bone record from two subregions of the Pacific Northwest shows remarkable stability in salmon use. As major changes in the ecological and social system occurred over this lengthy period, persistence in the fishery is not due simply to a lack of perturbation, but rather indicates resilience in the ecological--human system. Of several factors possibly contributing to resilience, low human population size and harvesting pressure, habitat enhancement, and suppression of competing predators do not appear to be of major importance. Flexible resource use, including human use of a range of local resources, many of which are linked in a food web with salmon, likely contributed to resilience. Most important were the beliefs and social institutions (including ownership, regulation, rituals, and monitoring) that placed restraints on salmon use as a common pool resource. In contrast, only a small fraction of our modern society relies economically on or has direct interaction with the fish, which limits our concern and willingness to fundamentally change behaviors that contribute to habitat degradation and loss, the main challenges facing salmon populations today. Salmon recovery efforts may benefit substantially from investing more resources into establishing links between community groups and actual fish populations, which would create a sense of proprietorship, one of the keys to resilience in the indigenous salmon fishery. Close

• 3. [Article] Can Salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) Be Identified to Species Using Vertebral Morphometrics?

  Remains of anadromous Pacific salmon and trout (genus Oncorhynchus) are common in archaeological sites from California to Alaska; however, morphological similarity generally precludes species identification, ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Can Salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) Be Identified to Species Using Vertebral Morphometrics? Author: Huber, Harriet R., Jorgensen, Jeffery C., Butler, Virginia L., Baker, Greg, Stevens, Rebecca Year: 2011 Remains of anadromous Pacific salmon and trout (genus Oncorhynchus) are common in archaeological sites from California to Alaska; however, morphological similarity generally precludes species identification, limiting the range of questions that salmonid remains can address in relation to past human use and ongoing efforts in conservation biology. We developed a relatively simple, rapid, and non-destructive way to classify salmon and trout vertebrae from archaeological contexts to species using length, height and the ratio of length to height. Modern reference material was obtained from all seven anadromous Oncorhynchus species native to the west coast of North America. A minimum of ten adult Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), chum (O. keta), coho (O. kisutch), pink (O.gorbuscha), and sockeye salmon (O. nerka) and cutthroat (O. clarki clarki) and steelhead trout (O. mykiss) were skeletonized and vertebra length and height were measured. Morphometric analyses compared species classification success based on Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), and randomForest, with CART performing the best. Classification analyses used all seven species individually, but because of considerable overlap among several species we also conducted analyses on four species groupings. We assigned Chinook salmon and cutthroat to their own groups based on their dissimilarities from each other and the other species. The remaining species were divided into two group complexes (a) chum, coho, and steelhead; and (b) pink and sockeye. When we grouped species according to similar morphology, CART overall success rates increased, ranging from 92 to 100%. Individual species with the highest successful classification rates using CART were Chinook salmon and cutthroat, from 92 to 100%, respectively. We applied our classification to an assemblage of ancient (1000 to 3000 year old) salmonid vertebrae from the Swiftwater Rockshelters excavations on the upper Wenatchee River in Washington State, U.S.A. Title: Can Salmonids (Oncorhynchus spp.) Be Identified to Species Using Vertebral Morphometrics? Author: Huber, Harriet R., Jorgensen, Jeffery C., Butler, Virginia L., Baker, Greg, Stevens, Rebecca Year: 2011 Remains of anadromous Pacific salmon and trout (genus Oncorhynchus) are common in archaeological sites from California to Alaska; however, morphological similarity generally precludes species identification, limiting the range of questions that salmonid remains can address in relation to past human use and ongoing efforts in conservation biology. We developed a relatively simple, rapid, and non-destructive way to classify salmon and trout vertebrae from archaeological contexts to species using length, height and the ratio of length to height. Modern reference material was obtained from all seven anadromous Oncorhynchus species native to the west coast of North America. A minimum of ten adult Chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), chum (O. keta), coho (O. kisutch), pink (O.gorbuscha), and sockeye salmon (O. nerka) and cutthroat (O. clarki clarki) and steelhead trout (O. mykiss) were skeletonized and vertebra length and height were measured. Morphometric analyses compared species classification success based on Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Classification and Regression Trees (CART), and randomForest, with CART performing the best. Classification analyses used all seven species individually, but because of considerable overlap among several species we also conducted analyses on four species groupings. We assigned Chinook salmon and cutthroat to their own groups based on their dissimilarities from each other and the other species. The remaining species were divided into two group complexes (a) chum, coho, and steelhead; and (b) pink and sockeye. When we grouped species according to similar morphology, CART overall success rates increased, ranging from 92 to 100%. Individual species with the highest successful classification rates using CART were Chinook salmon and cutthroat, from 92 to 100%, respectively. We applied our classification to an assemblage of ancient (1000 to 3000 year old) salmonid vertebrae from the Swiftwater Rockshelters excavations on the upper Wenatchee River in Washington State, U.S.A. Close

• 4. [Article] The fisheries of the Lower Columbia River, 1792 to 1850, based on EuroAmerican explorer and fur company accounts

  The role of fish in the Native American economy of the lower Columbia River has never been considered in detail. My study focused on the Columbia River from its mouth to the Cascades and the Willamette ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: The fisheries of the Lower Columbia River, 1792 to 1850, based on EuroAmerican explorer and fur company accounts Author: Martin, Michael A. Year: 2006 The role of fish in the Native American economy of the lower Columbia River has never been considered in detail. My study focused on the Columbia River from its mouth to the Cascades and the Willamette River from its confluence with the Columbia to Willamette Falls. For this study I asked: How was salmon used? What other fish were important? Where and how were these fish taken and used? To address these questions, I evaluated historical documents, including explorer's accounts and the administrative records of fur companies dating from the late 1700's through the 1850's. I used fishery data, physical descriptions, migratory and spawning habits, and foraging patterns to identify fish in historic accounts. I annotated historic information and provided a synthesis of the historic fisheries. White sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) and chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) dominated the trade. Chum (O.keta) and lamprey (Lampetra sp.) were available, although not traded in large numbers. White sturgeon, eulachon, fall chinook, chum and lamprey were smoke cured. Steel head (0. mykiss) , coho (O.kisutch), perch (Embiotocidae), and resident trout were traded in small numbers indicating that other fish were part of the economy. Sockeye. salmon (O.nerka) was not traded. f "~{.' Indians captured white sturgeon with: multiple hooks on set-lines and funnel nets to take white sturgeon during the winter; scoop nets and the eulachon rake took eulachon; spring and summer chinook were taken with hoop nets and platforms in the Cascades rapids and at Willamette Falls; gaffs were used to take chinook and sturgeon during the summer in Baker Bay; and hoop nets took fall chinook in streams. Seine nets were noted but not were not discussed except for the chinook fishery of Baker Bay. Historic information on fishes used and methods of capture contrasts with the archaeological record of the Portland Basin. Resident freshwater fish, minnows (Cyprinidae) and suckers (Catostomus sp.), are abundant in the archaeological faunal record, but are rarely mentioned in historic accounts. Artifacts such as net weights are common in archaeological contexts in contrast with the limited discussions in the historic record. Possible explanations for these discrepancies are reviewed. Title: The fisheries of the Lower Columbia River, 1792 to 1850, based on EuroAmerican explorer and fur company accounts Author: Martin, Michael A. Year: 2006 The role of fish in the Native American economy of the lower Columbia River has never been considered in detail. My study focused on the Columbia River from its mouth to the Cascades and the Willamette River from its confluence with the Columbia to Willamette Falls. For this study I asked: How was salmon used? What other fish were important? Where and how were these fish taken and used? To address these questions, I evaluated historical documents, including explorer's accounts and the administrative records of fur companies dating from the late 1700's through the 1850's. I used fishery data, physical descriptions, migratory and spawning habits, and foraging patterns to identify fish in historic accounts. I annotated historic information and provided a synthesis of the historic fisheries. White sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) and chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) dominated the trade. Chum (O.keta) and lamprey (Lampetra sp.) were available, although not traded in large numbers. White sturgeon, eulachon, fall chinook, chum and lamprey were smoke cured. Steel head (0. mykiss) , coho (O.kisutch), perch (Embiotocidae), and resident trout were traded in small numbers indicating that other fish were part of the economy. Sockeye. salmon (O.nerka) was not traded. f "~{.' Indians captured white sturgeon with: multiple hooks on set-lines and funnel nets to take white sturgeon during the winter; scoop nets and the eulachon rake took eulachon; spring and summer chinook were taken with hoop nets and platforms in the Cascades rapids and at Willamette Falls; gaffs were used to take chinook and sturgeon during the summer in Baker Bay; and hoop nets took fall chinook in streams. Seine nets were noted but not were not discussed except for the chinook fishery of Baker Bay. Historic information on fishes used and methods of capture contrasts with the archaeological record of the Portland Basin. Resident freshwater fish, minnows (Cyprinidae) and suckers (Catostomus sp.), are abundant in the archaeological faunal record, but are rarely mentioned in historic accounts. Artifacts such as net weights are common in archaeological contexts in contrast with the limited discussions in the historic record. Possible explanations for these discrepancies are reviewed. Close

• 5. [Article] Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish that Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River

  As part of a special issue of the 'Oregon Historical Quarterly,' discusses the native species of fish in the lower Columbia River described by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805-06. They identified ...

  Citation × Citation Citation Abstract Copy Title: Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish that Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River Author: Butler, Virginia L. Year: 2004 As part of a special issue of the 'Oregon Historical Quarterly,' discusses the native species of fish in the lower Columbia River described by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805-06. They identified red charr, salmon trout, sturgeon, anchovy, skeet, and other fish that Indians caught and used as trade items with the Corps of Discovery. However, editors of the Lewis and Clark journals have often erred in identifying the fish Lewis and Clark described; the challenge in identifying anadromous fish lies in changing coloration, markings, and examination of habitat. There has been a drastic decline of native fish since 1805 and a growing dominance of exotic species. Title: Where Have All the Native Fish Gone? The Fate of Fish that Lewis and Clark Encountered on the Lower Columbia River Author: Butler, Virginia L. Year: 2004 As part of a special issue of the 'Oregon Historical Quarterly,' discusses the native species of fish in the lower Columbia River described by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark in 1805-06. They identified red charr, salmon trout, sturgeon, anchovy, skeet, and other fish that Indians caught and used as trade items with the Corps of Discovery. However, editors of the Lewis and Clark journals have often erred in identifying the fish Lewis and Clark described; the challenge in identifying anadromous fish lies in changing coloration, markings, and examination of habitat. There has been a drastic decline of native fish since 1805 and a growing dominance of exotic species. Close