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The Sablefish (Anoplopoma Fimbria) Of Čḯxwicən: Socioenvironmental Lessons From An Unusually Abundant Species, Reno Nims, Virginia L. Butler

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We analyzed sablefish (Anoplopoma fimbria) remains from Čḯx^wicən (pronounced ch-WHEET-son), a 2700 year-old ancestral village of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in northwest Washington state, U.S.A., to improve understanding of how this species was used by Native American/First Nations peoples in the past. Though sablefish are abundant at Čḯx^wicən, and limited ethnographic accounts indicate they were highly prized in northwestern North America, their remains are rare in regional archaeology. We present a body-size regression model for estimating the fork length (FL) of archaeologically represented sablefish and determining which habitats they were captured from (i.e. shallow, nearshore …