Widening diet breadth, declining foraging efficiency, and prehistoric harvest pressure: ichthyofaunal evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound, California

Abstract

The Emeryville Shellmound is a famous but now destroyed midden once located on the east shore of San Francisco Bay. Analyses of the fish remains from the stratified late Holocene deposits indicate that prehistoric peoples had substantial impacts on the sturgeon populations of the Bay. This calls into question the commonly held belief that native peoples lived in harmony with nature and has important implications for the management of modern vertebrate populations.