Presenter: Gabriel Sanchez
Mentor: Jon Erlandson
Oral Presentation
Major: Anthropology
Anthropologists have long believed that Native Americans on the Northern Oregon Coast did not actively hunt whales, but archaeological evidence suggests otherwise. My project utilizes ethnographic data, comparative artifact analysis, radiocarbon dating, and blood residue analysis to investigate whether whales may have been hunted during prehistoric times along the Northern Oregon Coast. From the Par-Tee site (35CLT20), a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) phalange with an elk bone harpoon point embedded in it, provides evidence of whale hunting. AMS 14C dating of the whale bone and elk harpoon showed that they were both used approximately 1500 years ago, well before European contact. The dimensions of the embedded harpoon point were determined using computed tomography (CT) scanning to compare it to other harpoons points from the site. Several of these harpoons were selected for blood residue analysis, which identified evidence for trout, salmon, and steelhead fishing.