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Comments and Addenda on Tuna Tagging and Shell Fishhooks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

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

Abstract

Reinman's misinterpretation (in his article in this issue) of Landberg's (1966) remarks about the aboriginal use of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook is corrected, and the unlikelihood that this type of hook was used by fishermen to catch tunas is further emphasized. Conclusive evidence that tunas transport fishhooks is introduced for representatives of one species, bluefin, in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans. Taking this evidence into consideration, the tentative nature of the tuna-tagging evidence is again noted, and it is stressed that considerably more data will be required to substantiate presently proposed models of migration for tuna populations before incontrovertible geographical relationships can be drawn between Oceania and other areas. Independent invention as an alternative to the hypothesis of hook transportation by fish as an explanation for the distribution of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook is examined with reference to Crain's (1966) article on the mechanical aspects of this hook type. It is concluded that independent invention, as suggested earlier (Landberg 1966), probably accounts for part of the distribution of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook and that transportation of this type of hook by migratory fish would have been only a complicating factor in its geographical distribution.

Type
Facts and Comments
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1968

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