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Tuna Tagging and the Extra-Oceanic Distribution of Curved, Single-Piece Shell Fishhooks in the Pacific

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Leif C. W. Landberg
Leif C. W. Landberg*
Affiliation:
Davis, California
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Abstract

Curved, single-piece shell fishhooks are found archaeologically in Oceania, Ecuador, southern Peru and northern Chile, and the Santa Barbara region of southern California. The hypothesis that fish were possible transpacific carriers of these shell fishhooks is examined in the light of recent tuna-tagging research. Tag release and recovery data show that three species of tuna are capable of undertaking long-range migrations. Skipjack tunas are known to migrate from Baja California to Hawaii. Some bluefin tunas have migrated from Baja California to Japan. Albacore, which is believed to consist of a single population in the northern Pacific Ocean, probably circumnavigates the Pacific. A migration model of the northern Pacific albacore population suggests at least one possible transportation route of shell fishhooks between Hawaii and the Santa Barbara region. Heyerdahl has postulated that the association at historic contact in the Santa Barbara region of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook, the frameless plank canoe, and the Polynesian-type cosmogony of the Chungichnish cult is evidence for pre-Columbian transpacific contact. Contrary to his theory, reasons are advanced here to suggest that these traits may instead be fortuitously associated rather than diffused as a complex.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , April 1966 , pp. 485 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1966

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