Sustainable Indigenous Fishing in the Pre-Contact Caribbean: Evidence and Critical Considerations from Carriacou, Grenada

Abstract

Multiple studies reveal pre-1492 anthropogenic impacts on Caribbean fisheries that are consistent with overfishing, including changes in targeted prey, shifts in marine habitats exploited, and decreases in the average body size of taxa. At the Indigenous Caribbean village of Sabazan (AD 400–1400) on Carriacou, Lesser Antilles, post-AD 800 declines in fishing, increased mollusk collection, and changes in resource patch emphasis accord with the archaeological correlates of resource depression predicted by foraging theory models from behavioral ecology. Here, I apply foraging theory logic and abundance indices incorporating body size and fish habitat to test the predictions of expanded diet breadth, declining prey body size, and shifts to more distant fishing patches that are typically associated with overfishing. Results uphold a significant decrease in overall fishing, which may be due to habitat change associated with the Medieval Warm Period. Indices of fish size and resource patch use do not meet foraging theory expectations for resource depression, however. Instead, they suggest an absence of resource depression in the Sabazan fishery and at least 600 years of sustainable fishing. I review similar findings for other Caribbean archaeological sites with either negative evidence for fisheries’ declines or quantitatively demonstrated sustainable fishing. These sites collectively serve as a critical reminder of the heterogeneous trajectories of Indigenous social–ecological systems in the pre-contact Caribbean and the need for meta-level analyses of the region’s ancient fisheries. I discuss the application of the sustainability concept in archaeological studies of fishing and conclude that a more critical, explicit approach to defining and measuring sustainability in ancient fisheries is needed.