A 4,000-year record of multifaceted fisheries in the central Georgia Bight (USA)

Abstract

Data from Georgia’s (USA) coastal fishing communities demonstrate that life on the coast was neither simplistic nor unproductive. Evidence of multifaceted fisheries is found from ca. 2700 BC into the AD 1500s. We draw upon this record to survey fishing strategies and technologies, seasonal periodicity, residential mobility, and resource management before European-sponsored colonization. Flexibility, variability, and resilience in fishery practices were the norm in Georgia’s tidewater reaches throughout this lengthy period. These skilled fishers used many taxa characteristic of this rich, diverse estuarine ecosystem. Fishing strategies were not homogeneous among the communities studied, indicating local conditions and preferences guided residents at each location. Seasonal resources were not sufficiently critical for resource insecurity to make permanent coastal residence untenable. Focusing research on evidence for whether, or how, coastal communities managed their fisheries would be more productive than seeking foragers, collectors, or hunter-gatherers among these fishers.

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