Native American use of cetaceans in pre-contact Oregon: Biomolecular and taphonomic analyses illuminate human–cetacean relationships
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study characterizes how Native Americans living on the Oregon coast used whales and small cetaceans prior to European contact. We present an original analysis of a large subsample (NISP = 1177) of archaeological cetacean remains from the Palmrose (35CLT47) site, and new identifications from the previously analyzed Par-Tee (35CLT20; NISP = 31) and Tahkenitch Landing (35DO130; NISP = 33) sites. Using zooarchaeological and biomolecular analyses we report species presence and modification patterns to characterize use. Gray (Eschrichtius robustus) and humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) were the most commonly identified whale species and likely preferred source of food, oil, bone for tool manufacture, and possibly sinew. Dolphins and porpoises, especially harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), were a source of food and possibly bone for tool manufacture. While site inhabitants may have engaged in opportunistic hunting, the presence of species such as blue (Balaenoptera musculus) and Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris) suggests collection of beached animals was also an important acquisition strategy. Our study demonstrates the value of: (1) biomolecular analyses for improved species identifications and understanding of species richness; and (2) thorough zooarchaeological analyses to fully understand dietary and cultural contributions of cetaceans to pre-contact lifeways on the Oregon coast.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".