“… the most delicious fish …”—toward a zooarchaeology of the green sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis , on the coastal Northeast of North America

AbstractRecent studies have underlined the importance of shellfish in Ancestral Wabanaki diets. Green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) remains are a substantial component of shellfish assemblages from some Ancestral Wabanaki habitation sites and are present in smaller amounts in many other archaeological sites on the coastal Northeast. We summarize extant knowledge of archaeological sea urchin remains in the Quoddy Region of New Brunswick and Maine, part of the traditional homeland of the Peskotomuhkatiyik (the Passamaquoddy people). We position this information in regional historical, ecological, and archaeological contexts. Our results suggest that sea urchins were harvested at specific points in the annual tidal cycle. We also suggest that changes in sea urchin abundance through time could reflect changes in local environments, perhaps partially associated with changing climates.Keywords: WabanakiMaine–Maritimesshellfish analysissea urchinszooarchaeology AcknowledgementsWe thank Dr Donald Soctomah (Peskotomuhkati THPO) for his knowledge about sea urchin and for supporting this research. We are also grateful to Chief Hugh Akagi for enabling work at several archaeological sites. Thanks to Dr Trevor Orchard and Dr Gabe Hrynick for feedback on earlier drafts. Gabe also generously provided column and bulk samples from Reversing Falls. Data incorporated into this study were gathered through projects funded by SSHRC, National Geographic Society, University of New Brunswick, the University of Toronto (Faculty of Arts and Science and Archaeology Centre), and the Harrison McCain Foundation. We are also grateful to the students and volunteers who have assisted over the decades of research represented in this paper. We also wish to thank the four anonymous reviewers who provided excellent comments on this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1 Due to the historical, linguistic, and cultural relationships among Wabanaki peoples, we use the term Ancestral Wabanakiyik to refer to the people who inhabited the sites we examine in this study.2 Newsom (Citation2021) notes that Wabanaki community members dislike the term “midden.” Thus, we use the term shell-bearing for sites containing analyzable amounts of shell (Claassen Citation1991).3 https://pmportal.org/dictionary/musahkuhs.4 https://pmportal.org/dictionary/massols.5 https://pmportal.org/dictionary/sincokkot.6 See, e.g., https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/23500.7 https://legislature.maine.gov/statutes/12/title12sec6302-A.html.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by SSHRC (award #435-2017-1498), National Geographic Society (HJ-039R-17), SIG funding (#511223), Harrison McCain Foundation, the University of New Brunswick, the University of Toronto Faculty of Arts programs (Research Excursion, Research Opportunity, and Work-study), and the U of T Archaeology Center Discovery Grant.