DOI: 10.5061/dryad.hqbzkh1mt
title: Archaeology demonstrates sustainable Ancestral Coast Salish salmon stewardship over thousands of years pre-contact

description: Salmon are an essential component of the ecosystem in Tsleil-Waututh
 Nation’s traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory, centred on
 present-day Burrard Inlet, BC, Canada, where Tsleil-Waututh people have
 been harvesting salmon, along with a wide variety of other fishes, for
 millennia. Tsleil-Waututh Nation is an ancestral Coast Salish community
 that has called the Inlet home since time immemorial. This research
 assesses the continuity and sustainability of the salmon fishery at
 təmtəmíxʷtən, an ancestral Tsleil-Waututh settlement in the Inlet, over
 thousands of years before European contact (1792 CE). We apply
 Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis to 245 archaeological
 salmon vertebrae to identify the species that were harvested by the
 Tsleil-Waututh community that lived at təmtəmíxʷtən. The results
 demonstrate that Tsleil-Waututh communities consistently and
 preferentially fished for chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) over the period
 of almost 3,000 years. The consistent abundance indicates a sustainable
 chum salmon fishery over that time and a strong salmon-to-people
 relationship through generations. This research supports Tsleil-Waututh
 Nation’s stewardship obligations under their ancestral legal principles to
 maintain conditions that uphold the Nation’s way of life.
description: All samples were analysed
 within the Ancient DNA and Proteins (ADαPT) Facility in the Department of
 Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. A total of 245 fish
 vertebrae were analysed using the method published in Buckley et al. 2009,
 modified as described in Richter et al. Briefly, ca. 10–30 mg of bone was
 subsampled and demineralized 0.6 M HCl at 4°C. Samples were rinsed in 200
 μL of 0.1 M NaOH to remove humic compound, then rinsed three times in the
 same volume of 50 mM ammonium bicarbonate solution (NH4HCO3) pH 8.0
 (AmBic). Samples were gelatinized through incubation in 100 μL of AmBic at
 65 °C for 1 h at 65, before being enzymatically digested overnight at 37
 °C in 0.4 μg of trypsin. Digested samples were acidified to 0.1%
 trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) and purified using Pierce™ 100 μL C18 tips
 (ThermoFisher). One microliter of α-cyano-hydroxycinnamic acid (matrix)
 was added to 1 μL of collagen extract and spotted in triplicate with onto
 a 384 spot MALDI target plate alongside calibration standards. MALDI-TOF
 was conducted on a Bruker Ultraflex III mass spectrometer with a Nd:YAG
 smart beam laser, with a SNAP averaging algorithm used to obtain
 monoisotopic masses (C 4.9384, N 1.3577, O 1.4773, S 0.0417, H 7.7583).
 Triplicate spectra were averaged and visually inspected using mMass
 software to identify diagnostic markers published in Richter et al. The
 raw MALDI spectra are uploaded here. 
description: # Archaeology demonstrates sustainable Ancestral Coast Salish salmon
 stewardship over thousands of years pre-contact: MALDI-TOF data --- Salmon
 are an essential component of the ecosystem in Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s
 traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory, centred on present-day
 Burrard Inlet, BC, Canada, where Tsleil-Waututh people have been
 harvesting salmon, along with a wide variety of other fishes, for
 millennia. Tsleil-Waututh Nation is an ancestral Coast Salish community
 that has called the Inlet home since time immemorial. This research
 assesses the continuity and sustainability of the salmon fishery at
 təmtəmíxʷtən, an ancestral Tsleil-Waututh settlement in the Inlet, over
 thousands of years before European contact (1792 CE). We apply
 Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis to 245 archaeological
 salmon vertebrae to identify the species that were harvested by the
 Tsleil-Waututh community that lived at təmtəmíxʷtən. The results
 demonstrate that Tsleil-Waututh communities consistently and
 preferentially fished for chum salmon (*Oncorhynchus keta*) over the
 period of almost 3,000 years. The consistent abundance indicates a
 sustainable chum salmon fishery over that time and a strong
 salmon-to-people relationship through generations. This research supports
 Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s stewardship obligations under their ancestral
 legal principles to maintain conditions that uphold the Nation’s way of
 life. ## Description of the Data and file structure This zip file contains
 raw MALDI-TOF spectra for each of the 245 salmonid vertebrae sampled for
 ZooMS. Each sample was spotted in triplicate, along with calibration
 standards, onto a 384 spot Bruker MALDI ground steel target plate using 1
 µL of sample and 1 µL of α-cyano-hydroxycinnamic acid matrix. The samples
 were run on a Bruker ultraflex III MALDI TOF/TOF mass spectrometer with a
 Nd:YAG smart beam laser University of York in York, UK, and a SNAP
 averaging algorithm was used to obtain monoisotopic masses (C 4.9384, N
 1.3577, O 1.4773, S 0.0417, H 7.7583). Raw spectral data has been uploaded
 here for each sample in triplicate. Each sample is within an individual
 folder with the sample name (e.g., A713). Each raw spectrum is labelled
 with the sample name and the spot location on the MALDI Plate (e.g.,
 _A1,_A4, _A9). ## Sharing/access Information Links to other publicly
 accessible locations of the data: None.