Wabanaki food economy during the Middle to Late Maritime Woodland Period: Quoddy Region, Maine, USA

Abstract

In this thesis, I present two papers about coastal hunter-gatherer resource intensification during the Maritime Woodland period (ca. 3000 to 550 cal BP) in the western Quoddy Region of Maine. Each of these papers address this topic through zooarchaeology; that is, concerned with the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. The faunal remains excavated from two shell heap features at Sipp IA (80.25A), a Middle Maritime Woodland period (ca. 2200 to 1300 cal BP) site, are used to retrace the procurement and consumption practices of the people who once resided at the site. Analysis revealed high amounts of Atlantic tomcod (Microgadus tomcod) remains, spirally fractured mammal bone and large concentrations of highly fragmented unidentifiable mammal remains. This research adds to the growing database on economic change during the transition from the Middle Maritime Woodland period to the Late Maritime Woodland period (ca. 1300 to 550 cal BP) (see Black 2002, 2004). Furthermore, these papers contribute to the archaeological understanding of the tempo of settlement and subsistence change in the region and indicate ways in which ancestral Wabanaki people intensified food resources.