MINI REVIEW article
Front. Environ. Archaeol.
Sec. Zooarchaeology
This article is part of the Research TopicExploring Ichthyoarchaeology: Bridging Methodological Gaps and Advancing Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Human-Aquatic Ecosystem InteractionsView all 4 articles
Far from Shore: Archaeology of Seafood Canneries and Offshore Commercial Fishing
Provisionally accepted
- 1Smithsonian Institution, Washington, United States
- 2University of Oregon, Eugene, United States
- 3Chinese Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States
- 4The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, United States
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The 19th and 20th centuries were a transformative time for ocean ecosystems, marked by overfishing, habitat degradation, and a series of other anthropogenic perturbations. In the northeast Pacific, the creation of canneries from Alaska to Mexico drove commercial fisheries for tuna, salmon, sardines, and other fishes by opening new markets around the world and fishing for or importing fishes from equally distant places. Here, we synthesize archaeological investigations of 19th and 20th century offshore capitalist fishing industries in the northeast Pacific, using the region's coastal canneries to illustrate emerging opportunities in environmental archaeology. Archaeology has an important role to play in research on the historical ecology of the origins of offshore capitalist commercial fishing and connections to the global acceleration of the mid-20th century, especially through interdisciplinary research that integrates archaeology, historical records, and archaeological/historical museum specimens.
Keywords: California, greatacceleration, Northwest Coast, Pacific coast, Salmon, Tuna, zooarchaeology
Received: 14 Nov 2025; Accepted: 31 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Rick, Braje, Bentz and Elliott Smith. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Torben C Rick
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