The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancient cultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North America

Abstract

The perspective of nutritional ecology produces a more comprehensive understanding of the dietary, economic, and socio-cultural importance of Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) to Northwest Coast societies and Alaska Natives than do models derived from optimal foraging theory. The food value of herring meat, eggs, and oil are found to rank highly not just in calories or protein, but especially in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Herring provides large amounts of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in addition to iron, zinc, copper, and selenium. In coastal Alaska and along the Northwest Coast, herring was/is one of a vast array of traditional foods in a diverse diet. Herring apparently played different dietary roles in different cultural settings; in some areas it was a seasonal feast food, while in others its products were processed into forms that could be consumed throughout the annual cycle. Herring provided essential nutrients that affected human health, growth, and development, and likely facilitated demographic expansion. Paired with the indigenous and scientific knowledge of how herring function within North Pacific ecosystems, we can better appreciate the role of herring as a cultural keystone species.

Full text

The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancient cultural keystone species on the
Northwest Coast of North America
Madonna L. Moss
Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1218, USA
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 3 June 2015
Received in revised form 24 August 2015
Accepted 28 August 2015
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Clupea pallasii
Fisheries
EPA
DHA
DPA
Omega-3 fatty acids
The perspective of nutritional ecology produces a more comprehensive understanding of the dietary, economic,
and socio-cultural importance of Pacificherring(Clupea pallasii) to Northwest Coast societies and Alaska Natives
than do modelsderived from optimal foraging theory. The food value of herring meat, eggs, and oil are found to
rank highly not just in calories or protein, but especially in healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Herring provides large
amounts of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) in addition to iron, zinc, copper, and
selenium. In coastal Alaska and along the Northwest Coast, herring was/is one of a vast array of traditional
foods in a diverse diet. Herring apparently played different dietary roles in different cultural settings; in some
areas it was a seasonal feast food, while in others its products were processed into forms that could be consumed
throughout the annual cycle. Herringprovided essentialnutrients that affected human health, growth, and devel-
opment, and likely facilitated demographic expansion. Paired with the indigenous and scientific knowledge of
how herring function within North Pacific ecosystems, we can better appreciate the role of herring as a cultural
keystone species.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is a small, oil-rich fish that has
been an important food across the entire Northwest Coast of North
America, stretching from southern Alaska to northern California. Yet
salmon is the fish most often associated with the Northwest Coast,
ever since Clark Wissler christened it The Salmon Area (Wissler, 1917).
More recently, using watershed, ocean, and nearshore characteristics,
Augerot (2005) divided the entire area bounded by the North Pacific
Ocean into hierarchical levels of Salmon Ecoregions. Although the con-
servation purpose of these designations is worthy, it focuses attention
on one genus (Oncorhynchus) in a way that obscures ecosystemic rela-
tionships among species. For example, herring is a key prey of some
(Oncorhynchus tshawytscha,Oncorhynchus kisutch), but not all salmon
species. Many other fish, in addition to seabirds and marine mammals,
depend on herring as prey; as a forage fish, herring convert phytoplank-
ton and zooplankton into food energy consumable by dozens of other
animals. Herring in the North Pacific (and other forage fish elsewhere
in the world) form large schools during their seasonal cycles that
serve as concentrated food resources that feed a wide variety of marine
predators, including people.
Garibaldi and Turner (2004) defined a cultural keystone species as
one that shapes the identity of a people. On the Northwest Coast there
are several cultural keystones including salmon and redcedar, but her-
ring is also a cultural keystone species among some Alaska Native soci-
eties, as demonstrated by Thornton and Hebert (2014).Inthewordsof
Nelson Islander Louise Kanrilak, “herring are very important to us.
When we are out of herring, we are out of food”(Barker, 1993:73).
Alaska Natives have clear knowledge of the ecological importance of
herring,for example, Harold Martin (Tlingit) related, “[t]hey're [theher-
ring] just so important to the total food chain …every animal …in the
sea. They feed everything—things that we're depending on”(Thornton
and Hebert, 2014:1). In some Tlingit towns and villages, herring are
still used in 95% of the households during the spring season (Sitka
Tribe of Alaska, 2010). Herring is an important feast food and is widely
traded and shipped to Tlingit who live in the “lower 48.”Because of its
ecological role, herring is also a bellwether species; if herring are
doing well, then the marine ecosystem is healthy.
Following the reductionist logic of optimal foraging theory, herring
might be considered a low-ranked resource because of its relatively
small body size compared to salmon, halibut, Pacificcod,andothersize-
able fish caught along the Northwest Coast and Alaska. The handling
time for herring might also be considered too costly because of the tech-
nologies required to obtain, process, and (in some cases) store the fish.
The prey choice or optimal diet model would predict that people would
first exploit high-ranked resources and that only when these became
scarce, or too costly to pursue, would they turn to lower-ranked re-
sources. Particularly in zooarchaeological applications of the model,
body size is considered a proxy for prey rank, and by this measure,
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
E-mail address: mmoss@uoregon.edu.
JASREP-00170; No of Pages 7
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041
2352-409X/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/jasrep
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

herring would rank low. If herring were low-ranked, one would expect
herring to be used only late in pre-contact history of the Northwest
Coast, after larger-sized mammals and other fish had been over-
exploited. Such is not the case; instead, herring fishing started in the
early Holocene (Moss et al., 2011, 2015). Further, Butler and Campbell
(2004) (see also Campbell and Butler, 2010) could find no evidence
that any Northwest Coast fish experienced resource depression or was
over-exploited by indigenous peoples in the ancient past. Unfortunate-
ly, comparable synthetic data from across coastal Alaska are not yet
available.
Adopting a nutritional ecological approach helps us better under-
stand the economic and cultural importance of herring. Nutritional
ecology considers the relationship between essential nutrient intake
and overall human health in individuals and how this affects larger
demographic trends (Hockett and Haws, 2003:211). Whereas the
historical ecology of Pacific herring is concurrently addressed in
another paper (Moss et al., 2015), here I focus on the nutritional value
of herring.
2. Seasonal use of herring meat, eggs, and oil
Herring still play important roles in the diets of Alaska Natives and
First Nations of British Columbia. Although contemporary residents of
the region still practice many traditional technologies of herring acqui-
sition, processing, preparation, and storage, some techniques described
ethnographically have fallen out of use and been replaced by freezing,
canning, etc. My occasional use of the past tense in the description
that follows, however, should not be interpreted as evidence that
these techniques are not practiced today. My intent is to illustrate the
wide range of ways herring were used in different places at different
times of the year with tools and facilities that would have been available
during pre-contact history. I start by describing Tlingit and Haida prac-
tices, and then add in some additional techniques from elsewhere in
Alaska.
Among the Tlingit and Haida, herring meat was eaten fresh, dried,
smoked, or preserved in oil. Fresh herring could be caught almost anytime
during the year; their seasonal movements made them more or less avail-
able at certain times in certain places. When they spawn in the spring
(from March to May in different parts of southeast Alaska), large schools
of herring form, attracting an array of predators that could simultaneously
be the target of human hunting and fishing. Into summer and fall, “balls of
herring”form in response to the feeding of predators (such as salmon,
pinnipeds, or whales), and people in canoes often took advantage of
these using nets or herring rakes. The locations where herring spawn
(or spawned) in the spring are reasonably well-documented, but where
herring move during the winter is not as well-known. Local and Tradi-
tional Knowledge-bearers have documented some of these places in
southeast Alaska (Thornton et al., 2010a), indicating that substantial
numbers of fresh herring can also be obtained in the winter. Whole her-
ring were also caught to be used as bait for other fish.
Herring eggs are collected in the spring. Female herring lay eggs on
rocks, seaweeds, eelgrass, and other substrates in the intertidal and
subtidal zones, where they are subsequently fertilized by the milt of
the male herring. Alaska Native and First Nation collectors often lay
out hemlock or cedar boughs on which eggs are laid and can easily be
collected. They also operated floating traps. Herring eggs are a culinary
delicacy, especially when eaten raw and fresh. The spring egg harvest
continues to be an important cultural practice, and herring eggs are
cherished as a feast food associated with considerable prestige. Herring
eggs (raw or cooked) are often frozen today, and brought out at cultural
events throughout the year. Herring eggs traditionally were dried, or
could be preserved in oil or fermented. Emmons (1991:147) character-
ized herring eggs as a “luxury rather than a regular article of diet.”We
will return to this issue after considering the nutritional value of herring
in the following section.
During autumn, the fat content of herring is at its highest level of the
annual cycle. Herring rakes and nets were used to gather thousands of
herring. Herring oil was traditionally processed like oil of another
small fish, eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus). Old canoes were used as
large cooking vessels, into which large quantities of small fish were
placed and cooked to render out the oil. The oil was skimmed off the
top and placed in seal bladders or boxes for long-term storage.
Emmons (1991) described the circumstance, “[a]s the fish was kept
too long (…by white standards, not by those of the natives), the oil
was very rancid and offensive to us, but was doubly appreciated by
them.”This fermented oil might fall among the “tastily rotten,”foods
described by Yamin-Pasternak et al. (2014).Suchfermentationappar-
ently facilitated long-term preservation; without it, the oil would spoil
(Emmons, 1991:148; Mintz, 2014:640).
Other Alaska Native groups, including the Yupik and Inupiat, store
fermented fish (including herring) in seal pokes (sealskin bags) that
are then put into water-filled pits or holes dug into permafrost to stabi-
lize the temperature (Frink and Giordano, this volume; Starks, 2011).
Dried herring can also be stored in seal pokes. I note that fermented her-
ring is a staple of Scandinavian cuisines and fermented garum (fish
sauce) was a staple in the Mediterranean 2000 years ago. Fermentation
can actually enhance the nutritional value of a food because the
resulting lactic acid bacteria improve digestibility (Gilliland, 1990).
3. Results: the nutritional value of herring
The nutritional value of herring is first considered vis à vis other tra-
ditionalNorthwest Coast animal foods.The nutrients present in an array
of traditional Tlingit foods are taken from data compiled in Newton and
Moss (1984; Table 1).Fig. 1 illustrates the number of calories per 100 g
portion of a food. Eulachon is the richest at 308 cal per 100 g, followed
by dried herring roe at 294 cal, and herring meat at 270 cal. These
small fish have higher concentrations of calories than do salmon, bea-
ver, seal, deer, and other foods. For protein (Fig. 2), dried herring roe
ranks at the top, with 60.4 g per 100 g, followed by herring flesh at
45.7 g. Herring roe on kelp falls at the bottom, partly because the kelp
takes up some of the 100 g. With regard to fat (Fig. 3), eulachon has
24.8 g of fat per 100 g, over twice that of herring meat, which ranks
second. Bear, salmon, and herring roe are all leaner than herring and
eulachon meat. As is widely known, some fats arehealthier than others,
and herring is very rich in omega-3 fatty acids (Table 2, with data from
the OSU Seafood Network Information Center, 2014). Of the
ranked animal foods, herring yield 1.0 g of EPA per 100 g of edible tissue,
the most of any taxa listed. Compared to spiny dogfish (Squalus
acanthias; 1.2 g/100 g), herring has the second highest amount of DHA
(0.7 g/100 g). Spiny dogfish is an interesting resource because it
Table 1
Macronutrients in traditional Tlingit animal foods per 100 g portion.
Data from Newton and Moss (1984: Table 1).
Calories Protein (g) Fat (g)
Bear 148 19.9 8.3
Beaver 150 26.8 4.8
Cockles 79 13.5 0.7
Deer 126 22.9 3.4
Duck 109 21.5 2.1
Eulachon 308 20.5 24.8
Gumboots 83 17.1 1.6
Herring meat 270 45.7 10.6
Herring roe —dried 294 60.4 6.6
Herring on kelp 59 11.3 0.8
Octopus 57 11.9 0.6
Salmon, Chinook, smoked, canned 150 23.2 5.9
Salmon, sockeye, kippered 190 29.5 7.7
Sea cucumber 68 13.0 0.4
Seal 143 26.0 3.2
2M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

commonly occurs in Northwest Coast archeological assemblages, but
only in low abundance.
1
Elsewhere in the world, dogfish liver oil was
highly valued (Nicholson, 2005). Taking EPA and DHA together, herring
rank second among the 11 animal foods listed. Unfortunately, eulachon
is not listed among this group.Spiny dogfish and herring also yield0.1 g/
100 g of LNA (alpha-linolenic acid), which humans can convert to EPA
and DHA, but not very efficiently. As can be seen in Table 2, smelt is
the richest in LNA, with 0.5 g/100. USDA (2014) data on EPA and DHA
content for a wider range of resources are presented in Fig. 4.Fishroe
is ranked at the top, followed by herring. Both EPA and DHA provide im-
portant protection from cardiovascular and Alzheimer's diseases. These
fatty acids inhibit platelet aggregation and reduce lipids (especially tri-
glycerides) in the blood (Bates et al., 1985:78). They also are essential to
healthy brain and vision development of infants and reproductive
health of women (Bourre, 2006).
Fig. 5 illustrates the amount of omega-3 fatty acids per 100 g and per
meal (227 g) for fish from around the world, with data from Sidhu
(2003). The top-ranking sardines at the top of the chart (7.5 g/meal)
are packed in sardine oil, so they incorporate added fat. Atlantic mack-
erel (5.7 g/meal) was the only other of the world's fish ranked higher
than Pacific herring (3.9 g/meal) with regard to omega-3 fatty acids.
All of the top 11 fish provide the minimum daily requirement of
omega-3 fatty acids per meal. Sidhu (2003:341) explains that consum-
ing these omega-3 fatty acids reduces the riskof coronaryheart disease,
decreases mild hypertension, prevents certain cardiac arrhythmias and
sudden death, and lowers the incidence of diabetes. Sidhu (2003:341)
adds that omega-3 fatty acids may alleviate some of the symptoms of
rheumatoid arthritis.
From data compiled by Shahidi and Miraliakbari (2006) and Shahidi
and Senanayake (2006), we can compare the distribution of fatty acids
in herring, salmon, and seal oils (Fig. 6). Although these data derive
from Atlantic species, they are likely applicable to Pacific species.
While the spatial distribution of fatty acids in herring and salmon oil is
similar, seal oil has three fatty acids (16:1n−7; 18:1n−9andn−11;
20:1n−9) in substantial quantities not present in the fish oils. Seal oil
also has about 10 times the amount of DPA (docosapentaenoic acid,
22:5n−3) than the fish oils and DPA allows for faster and more thor-
ough metabolism of healthful fatty acids (Shahidi and Miraliakbari,
2006:228). The common use of seal oil as a condiment in Northwest
Coast diets apparently allows consumers to more effectively metabolize
healthy fatty acids from fish.
For other micronutrients (Fig. 7), we see that herring provides a
large amount of iron (1.12 mg/100 g), and respectable amounts of
zinc (0.53 mg/100 g) and copper (0.078 mg/100 g). Of the taxa shown
here, lingcod provides the most zinc (1.0 mg/100 g) and copper
(0.141 mg/100 g). Both herring and lingcod provide more than Chinook
salmon. For selenium (Fig. 8), herring eggs provide a large quantity
(1.07 mg/kg), over twice that of the second-ranked rockfish
(0.49 mg/kg; Yamashita et al., 2013:390–391). Herring flesh is ranked
third, yielding 0.4 mg/kg. Selenium is a constituent of antioxidant en-
zymes and proteins, and helps form DNA and acts as an antioxidant to
prevent cell damage from free radicals (Yamashita et al., 2013).
Fig. 3. Fat (g) in traditional Tlingit animal foods per 100 g portion.
Data from Newton and Moss (1984: Table 1).
Table 2
Omega-3 fatty acid content in g per 100 g of edible tissue.
Data from Oregon State University Seafood Network Information Center (2014).
LNA EPA DHA EPA + DHA Total omega-3
Spiny dogfish 0.1 0.7 1.2 1.9 2.0
Herring 0.1 1.0 0.7 1.7 1.8
King salmon 0.1 0.8 0.6 1.4 1.5
Sockeye salmon 0.1 0.5 0.7 1.2 1.3
Capelin 0.1 0.6 0.5 1.1 1.2
Pink salmon 0.4 0.6 1.0 1.0
Smelt 0.5 0.3 0.2 0.5 1.0
Pollock 0.0 0.1 0.4 0.5 0.5
Halibut 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.4 0.5
Crab 0.0 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.4
Clam 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.2
1
In general, livers of fish and marine mamma ls are richer in fatty acids t han the bodies
of these animals (Brown and Heron, 2005:68).
Fig. 1. Calories in traditional Tlingit animal foods per 100 g portion.
Data from Newton and Moss (1984: Table 1).
Fig. 2. Protein (g) in traditional Tlingit animal foods per 100 g portion.
Data from Newton and Moss (1984: Table 1).
3M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

4. The role of herring in Alaska Native diets
Was herring a staple food among Northwest Coast societies and
Alaska Natives? What role did herring play in a diet where animal
foods are abundant and abundantly rich in protein, fat, and minerals?
Some common ideas are that a staple food should fulfill most energy
and nutrient needs, be a dietary mainstay, commonly consumed, con-
sumed year round, or provide the bulk of calories consumed (Douglas,
1997). In the food security and development policy literature, staple
foods are conceived of as having to be cheap and supply plenty of starch
(e.g., United Nations, 2000:1).
In the previous section, we have seen that herring products are rich
enough food sources that they could supply the calories, protein,
healthy fats, iron, copper, zinc and selenium to be a dietary mainstay.
Herring roe is particularly nutritious, including over half the daily re-
quirement of thiamin (First Nations Health Council, 2015). But how
much herring roe was consumed? Was it eaten mostly in the spring
when fresh? Did people store large quantities and eat herring eggs
Fig. 4. DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) content (g) in 100 g of selected seafoods.
Data from USDA (2014).
Fig. 5. Omega-3 fatty acids per 100 g and per meal (227 g) for selected world fish (Sidhu, 2003).
4M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

throughout the year? Did they eat fresh, dried, or smoked herring and
herring oil every day? How we might answer these specific questions
archeologically is yet to be determined.
Looking at zooarchaeological data derived from more than 435,000
fish bones, McKechnie et al. (2014) found herring to be ubiquitous in a s-
semblages across the Northwest Coast. Among the 171 assemblages
that used adequate recovery methods, herring was the most abundant
fish in 95 assemblages, and the second-most abundant fish in another
41 assemblages. This is a striking result in a culture area where salmon
have been considered the most important fish (Moss and Cannon,
2011). But these data are too coarse to tell us about the seasonal use
of herring and the frequency of its consumption during the annual
cycle among different societies.
Today, among the Tlingit of southeast Alaska, herring eggs are a feast
food served at cultural events in the spring and throughout the year.
Herring eggs are collected en masse in Sitka. Across southeast Alaska's
smaller towns, some families are still able to collect small quantities of
herring eggs for limited family use. In Sitka, some individual families
and the Sitka Tribe of Alaska collect enough to freeze, and frozen herring
eggs are brought out for special occasions and shipped to family and
friends out-of-state. Collecting herringeggs in the spring is an important
cultural practice for Tlingit people, where Haa atxaayi Haa Kusteeyix
Sitee,“ourfood is our Tlingit way of life”helps explain the elemental im-
portance of wild food harvesting and preparation to Tlingit identity
(Moss, 2010; Newton and Moss, 2005). But in the absence of freezing,
were herring eggs collected as surplus and widely traded? Even if
archeologists had access to well-sampled collections from mortuary
contexts, isotopic study of human remains would not allow the discrim-
ination of all the specific sources of marine foods. Similarly, we do not
know if dried herring or herring oil were consumed routinely during
the year.
We do know that traditional diets on the Northwest Coast were
incredibly diverse. For example, Kopperl and Lape (2015) identified
almost 300 plant and animal foods as components of traditional Coast
Salish diets. Turner (1975) documented over 100 traditionally used
plants by coastal First Nations of B.C. With regard to terrestrial plants,
diets in Alaska were not as diverse as those of indigenous peoples fur-
ther south. For example, Alaska is too far north to have the starchy
acorns, camas, wapato, biscuitroot, and hazelnut available in Oregon,
Washington, and southern British Columbia.
In general, the diets of coastal Alaska Natives were very rich in pro-
teins and fats because of the economic reliance on fish and marine
mammals throughout the year. The dietary sources of carbohydrates,
however, were limited to berries, roots, seaweeds, and (where avail-
able) the inner bark of conifer trees. These sources of carbohydrates
could, however, be dried or covered in oil for long-term storage. Dried
seaweeds were especially good sources of carbohydrates (Newton and
Fig. 6. Distribution of specific fatty acids (weight %) in seal, herring, and salmon oils.
Data from Shahidi and Miraliakbari (2006) and Shahidi and Senanayake (2006).
Fig. 7. Micronutrients (mg) of five North Pacificfish.
Data from Titi Tudorancea Bulletin (2015).
Fig. 8. Selenium content (mg) of North Pacificfish.
Data from Yamashita et al. (2013 ).
5M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

Moss, 1984:43). Like berries, stems and shoots of green vegetables pro-
vided vitamin C and folic acid, as well as other vitamins and minerals,
but unlike berries, stems and shoots did not provide much in the way
of carbohydrates (Kuhnlein and Turner, 1991:10–11). Small amounts
of carbohydrates are found in animal foods, including shellfish, and
could have been supplemented by fermented foods (Hui, 1985)andoc-
casional gastrophagy (Buck et al., this volume).
There would appear to have been a low risk of protein poisoning
(“rabbit starvation”) from the excess consumption of lean meat
(e.g., Noli and Avery, 1988), because so many of the marine foods
consumed by Alaska Natives, including seals, had substantial quantities
of fat. Protein toxicity can occur if a person's liver or kidneys cannot
eliminate potentially toxic wastes generated from protein metabolism
(Bilsborough and Mann, 2006), but as we have seen, the DPA in seal
oil actually facilitates more thorough metabolism of healthful fatty
acids in fish. Bates et al. (1985) suggest there is a genetic component
to fat metabolism among Northwest Coast groups, and it seems likely
that contemporary standards for upper limits to daily protein intake
cannot be projected onto the past. As Speth (2010:85) explains, the
human body is capable of adapting to changes in consumption by
upregulating the enzymes involved in protein metabolism and urea
synthesis. M. J. Mosher (this volume) is investigating epigenetic mech-
anisms to better understand such variation in human metabolism. It
does seem likely that at least during some seasons of the year, Alaska
Natives would rely on fats rather than carbohydrates to help supply
their energy needs.
Clearly the dietary roles played by herring and its by-products
require further investigation. For some Alaska Natives such as Nelson
Islanders, herring may have served as a dietary mainstay. As quoted
previously, Louise Kanrilak stated, “[w]hen we are out of herring, we
are out of food”(Barker, 1993:73). Perhaps in some areas in some pe-
riods of pre-contact history, herring eggs were a seasonal delicacy or
luxury food. Because herring spawning in the spring is such a conspicu-
ous and dramatic seasonal event, attracting a wide range of herring
predators, it seems likely that people would take advantage of such
abundance, particularly after a long dark winter. They would not only
collect herring eggs and fish for herring, but they would take some of
the other fish, birds, and mammals that prey upon herring (Monks'
(1987) “prey as bait”hypothesis). Historical descriptions of schools of
herring filling Chatham Strait “for miles,”and the reduction oil fishery
that operated between July and January testify to the historical abun-
dance of herring in the summer, throughout the fall, and into winter
(U.S. Census, 1890:51). Such abundance and ubiquity is indicated
archeologically (McKechnie et al., 2014; Moss et al., 2011) and in the
oral historical interviews conducted by Thornton et al. (2010a, 2010b)
and Thornton and Hebert (2014).
5. Conclusion
Herring is just one of an array of foods in traditional Northwest Coast
and Alaska Native diets that likely facilitated demographic expansion
over hundreds of years. Although traditional Alaska Native diets may
have lacked sources of fresh starchy carbohydrates year-round, people's
energy needs were well-served by diets high in proteins and healthy
fats. The mechanisms by which Alaska Natives metabolized these pro-
teins and fats in ancient times likely differed from how these foods are
metabolized by contemporary populations. Certainly, more research
into the techniques and technologies of food preparation, processing,
storage, and culinary traditions, like that of Yamin-Pasternak et al.
(2014) and Frink and Giordano (this volume) would go a long way to
understanding the survival and resilience of these populations.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to BryanHockett for organizing the nutritional ecology
symposium held at the 80th annual meeting of the Society for American
Archaeology, April 15–19, 2015, in San Francisco. The research presented
by all the other participants was especially stimulating. I acknowledge
my on-going intellectual debt to Virginia Butler who continues to
push our field forward. The research reported here is an offshoot of
the study of the ancient DNA of Alaska herring that Dongya Yang,
Antonia Rodrigues, and Camilla Speller and I are conducting. For that
research, we acknowledge the support of NSF Grant 1203868.
References
Augerot, X., 2005. Atlas of Pacific Salmon. University of California Press, Berkeley, and
Wild Salmon Center and Ecotrust, Portland, OR.
Barker, J.H., 1993. Always Getting Ready Upterrlainarluta: Yup'ik Eskimo Subsistence in
Southwest Alaska. University of Washington Press, Seattle.
Bates, C., van Dam, C., Horrobin, D.F., Morse, N., Huang, Y.-S., Manku, M.S., 1985. Plasma
essentialfatty acids in pure and mixed race American Indians on and off a diet excep-
tionally rich in salmon. Prostaglandins Leukot. Med. 17, 77–84.
Bilsborough, S., Mann,N., 2006. A review of issues of dietary proteinintake in humans. Int.
J. Sport Nutr. Exercise Metab. 16 (2), 129–152.
Bourre, J.M., 2006. Effects of nutrients (in food) on the structure and function of the
nervous system: update on dietary requirements for brain. Part 2: macronutrients.
J. Nutr. Health Aging 10 (5), 386–399.
Brown, L.D., Heron, C., 2005. Presence or absence: a preliminary study into the detection
of fish oils inceramics. In: Mulville, J., Outram, A.K.(Eds.), The Zooarchaeology ofFats,
Oils, Milk and Dairying. Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 67–76.
Butler, V.L., Campbell, S.K., 2004. Resource intensification and resource depression in the
Pacific Northwest of North America: a zooarchaeological review. J. World Prehistory
18, 327–405.
Campbell, S.K., Butler, V.L., 2010. Archaeological evidence for resilience of PacificNorth-
west salmon populations and the socioecological system over the last ~7500 years.
Ecol. Soc. 15 (1), 17 (Online document, http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/
iss1/art17/, accessed March 31, 2010).
Douglas, M., 1997. Deciphering a meal. In: Counihan, C., Esterik, P.V. (Eds.), Food and
Culture: A Reader. Routledge, New York and London, pp. 135–158.
Emmons, G.T., 1991. In: de Laguna, F. (Ed.), The Tlingit Indians. University of Washington
Press, Seattle ( Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver; American Museum of Natural
History, New York).
First Nations Health Council. Fish. (Online document, http://www.fnhc.ca/pdf/
Traditional_Food_Facts_Sheets.pdf, accessed April 10, 2015) 2015.
Garibaldi, A., Turner, N.J., 2004. Cultural keystone species: implications for ecological con-
servation and restoration. Ecol. Soc. 9 (3), 1 (Online, http://www.ecologyandsociety.
org/vol9/iss3/art1).
Gilliland, S.E., 1990. Health and nutritional benefits from lactic acid bac teria. FEMS
Microbiol. Rev. 7 (1–2), 175–188. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6968.19 90.
tb04887.x.
Hockett, B., Haws, J., 2003. Nutritional ecology and diachronic trends in Paleolithic diet
and health. Evol. Anthropol. 12, 211–216.
Hui, Y.H., 1985. Principles and Issues in Nutrition. Wadsworth Health Sciences Division,
Monterey, CA.
Kopperl, Robert, Lape, Peter, 2015. Traditional coast Salish foods. (Online document,
http://www.burkemuseum.org/pub/reviving_traditional_food_knowledge.pdf,
accessed April 10, 2015).
Kuhnlein, H.V., Turner, N.J., 1991. Traditiona l Plant Foods of the Canadian Indigenous
Peoples: Nutrition, Botany and Use. Food and Nutrition in History and Anthropology
8. Gordon and Breach, Philadelphia.
McKechnie, I., Lepofsky, D., Moss, M.L., Butler, V.L., Orchard, T.J., Coupland, G., Foster, F.,
Caldwell, M., Lertzman, K., 2014. Archaeological data provide alternative hypotheses
on Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) distribution, abundance, and variability. PNAS
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1,316,072,111 (OnlineFebruary 18, 2014).
Mintz, S.W., 2014. Comment on The rotten renaissance in the Bering Strait: loving, loathing,
and washing the smell of foods with a (re)acquired taste. Curr. Anthropol. 55 (5),
639–640.
Monks, G.G., 1987. Prey as bait: the Deep Bay example. Can. J. Archaeol. 11, 119–142.
Moss, M.L., 2010. Re -thinking subsistence in Southeast Alaska: the potential of
zooarchaeology. Alaska J. Anthropol. 8 (1), 121–135.
Moss, Madonna L., Virginia L. Butler, and J. Tait Elder 2011. Herring bones in Southeast
Alaska archaeol ogical sites: the record of Tlingit use of Yaaw (Pacificherring,
Clupea pallasii). In The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries, edited by M. L. Moss
and A. Cannon. pp. 283–291. University of Alaska Press, Fairbanks.
Moss, M.L., Cannon, A., 2011. The Archaeology of North Pacific Fisheries. University of
Alaska Press, Fairbanks.
Moss, M.L., Rodrigues, A., Speller, C.F., Yang, D.Y., 2015. The historical ecology of Pacific
herring: tracing Alaska Native use of a forage fish. J. Archaeol. Sci. Rep. Spec. Issue
(Ichthyoarchaeology in the Americas, submitted May 17, 2015).
Newton, R.G., Moss, M.L., 1984. The Subsistence Lifewayof the Tlingit People: Excerpts of
Oral Interviews. USDA Forest Service, Alaska Region (R10-MR-30, Juneau).
Newton, R.G., Moss, M.L., 2005. Haa Atxaayi Haa Kusteeyix Sitee, Our Food is Our Tlingit
Way of Life: Excerpts of Oral Interviews. US DA Forest Service, Alaska Region
(R10-MR-30, Juneau).
Nicholson, R.A., 2005. Oil from troubled waters: historical andarchaeological investigations
into the use of fish and sea mammal oil in the Northern Isles of Scotland. In: Mulville,
J., Outram, A.K. (Eds.), The Zooarchaeology of Fats, Oils, Milk and Dairying. Oxbow
Books, Oxford, pp. 142–147.
6M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041

Noli, D., Avery, G., 1988. Protein poisoning and coastal subsistence. J. Archaeol. Sci. 15 (4),
395–401.
Oregon State University Seafood Network Information Center 2014. Online document,
http://seafood.oregonstate.edu/.pdf%20Links/Omega-3%20Content%20in%20Fish.pdf
(accessed August 25, 2014).
Shahidi, F., Miraliakbari, H., 2006. Marine oils: compositional characteristics and health
effects. In: Shahidi, F. (Ed.), Nutraceutical and Specialty Lipids and Their Co-products.
Taylor&Francis,BocaRaton,FL,pp.227–250.
Shahidi, F., Senanayake, S.P.J.N., 2006. Nutraceutical and specialty lipids. In: Shahidi, F.
(Ed.), Nutraceutical and Specialty Lipids and Their Co-products. Taylor & Francis,
Boca Raton, FL, pp. 2–22.
Sidhu, K.S.,2003. Health benefits and potential risks related to consumption of fishor fish
oil. Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 38, 336–344.
Sitka Tribe of Alaska, 2010. Annual Report on Management of Customary and Traditional
Herring Harvest. Sitka Tribe of Alaska, Sitka.
Speth, J.D., 2010. The Paleoanthropology and Archaeology of Big-game Hunting:
Protein, Fat, or Politics? Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer,
New York.
Starks, Z.S., 2011. Dryingand fermenting in the Arctic: dictating women's roles in Alaska's
Inupiat culture. In: Saberi, H. (Ed.), Cured, Fermented, and Smoked Foods: Proceed-
ings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010. Prospect Books, Totnes,
England, pp. 302–311.
Thornton, T.F., Hebert, J., 2014. Neoliberal and neo-communal herring fisheries in South-
east Alaska: reframing sustainabilityin marine ecosystems. Mar. Policy. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1016/j.marpol.2014.11.015i.
Thornton, T., Butler, V., Funk, F., Moss, M., Hebert, J., Tait Elder, J., 2010a. Herring
Synthesis: Documenting and Modeling Herring Spawning Areas within Socio-
ecological Systems Over Timein the SoutheasternGulf of Alaska. NorthPacific Research
Board Project #728 (Electronic document, http://herringsynthesis.research.pdx.edu/).
Thornton, T.F., Moss, M.L., Butler, V., Hebert, J., Funk, F., 2010b. Local an d traditional
knowledge and the historical ecology of Pacific herring in Alaska. J. Ecol. Anthropol.
14 (1), 81–88.
Titi Tudorancea Bulletin 2015. Online searches, performed from: http://www.tititudorancea.
com/z/nutrition.htm, accessed March 30, 2015.
Turner, N.J., 1975. Food Plants of British Columbia Indians. Part I. Coastal Peoples. B.C.
Provincial Museum Handbooks No. 34. Victoria, B.C.
United Nations, 2000. Food insecurity: when people live with hunger and fear starvation.
Food and Agriculture Organizati on of the United Na tions, Viale delle Terme di
Caracalla, 00100 Rome, Italy (Online document, http://www.fao.org/docrep/
x8200e/x8200e03.htm, accessed May 29, 2015).
U.S. Census Office, 1890. Report on Population and Resources of Alaska at the Eleventh
Census. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, p. 1890.
USDA 2014 Dietary guidelines. Appendix G2: Original food guide pyramid patterns and
description of U SDA analyses. ( Online document, bhttp://www.health.gov/
dietaryguidelines/dga2005/report/html/table_g2_adda2.htmN, accessed August 25,
2014).
Wissler, C., 191 7. The American Indian: An Introduction to the Anthropology of the
New World. Douglas C. McMurtrie, New York.
Yamashita, Y., Ya mashita, M., Iid a, H., 2013. Selenium content in seafood in Japan.
Nutrition 5, 388–395. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/nu5020388.
Yamin-Pasternak, S., Kliskey, A., Alessa, L., Pasternak, I., Schweitzer, P., 2014. The rotten
renaissance in the Bering Strait: loving, loathing, and washing the smell of foods
with a (re)acquired taste. Curr. Anthropol. 55 (5), 619–646.
7M.L. Moss / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Moss, M.L., The nutritional value of Pacific herring: An ancientcultural keystone species on the Northwest Coast of North
America, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.08.041