Response to O'Connor and Ono, Bailey and Erlandson

Abstract

I thank the contributors for their comments. We all agree that the Jerimalai data provide an intriguing glimpse of maritime activity in the Wallacean Pleistocene by showing that Scombridae were unusually prominent amongst 15 families of fish that had been caught around 40 000 BP. In various ways, we also agree that the hypothesis interpreting these data in O'Connor et al. (2011) is far from robust. Its fundamental proposition was that the scombrids were oceanic tuna, but O'Connor and Ono (above) now concede that, 'as we did not speciate [sic] the scombrids at Jerimalai we cannot be certain that oceanic species were represented'. Their description of samples and methods, which confirms the inadequacy of the comparative collection and notes that scombrid bone from Jerimalai Square A also may not be from tuna, simply underlines the thrust of my critique. Some of the scombrids might be oceanic tuna but since no tuna were identified, either as a class or species, the marine zones involved in scombrid fishing cannot be inferred, and the empirical argument for offshore tuna fishing collapses.