The Coast Salish subsistence economy has been characterized by local fishing adaptations to regional ecological variability (Mitchell 1971a.) This dissertation explores the temporal depth of these adaptations in the traditional territory of the Coast Salish, the Gulf of Georgia. Many researchers have used this, Donald Mitchell’s (1971a), model to develop theories of regional cultural development. Many of these interpretations present social complexity or social inequality – a hallmark of Northwest Coast social complexity – as having developed more or less in lock-step with the specialized fishing adaptation described among the Central Coast Salish, around the Fraser River. The temporal depth of this adaptation and the “Diversified” fishing adaptations described among the Northern and Southern Coast Salish, as well as their developmental relationship, are not well understood. In exploring this problem, this study evaluates whether or not the ecological ethnographic model is representative of the archaeology of these cultural subareas. A gap in the regional dataset which corresponds with a large portion of Mitchell’s (1971a) “Northern Diversified” fishing subarea has largely presented a previous study of this type. Recently excavated sites in traditional shíshálh territory provide artifact and archaeofaunal data that fill in this gap. These data are analyzed along with existing data from the Northern subarea and from the Central Gulf of Georgia (River and Straits Fishing subareas). The results of this study significantly broaden our understanding of prehistoric Coast Salish socioeconomic diversity, and test the assumed salmon specialization on the Fraser River and its primacy the development of regional ethnographic characteristics, especially pronounced social inequality. The results also shed light on the prehistoric importance of herring, a decreasingly overlooked resource in Northwest Coast archaeological studies, and advocate for the use of fine mesh recovery for quantifying the relative importance of fish species.

Culture types in Pacific Northwest archaeology are characteristic artifact assemblages distinguishing different prehistoric periods. Assemblages indicate a culture type transition during the 2,630 BP–270 BP occupation of Willows Beach (DcRt-10), southeastern Vancouver Island. Faunal remains could reveal links to subsistence patterns, following Croes’s theory that culture type change reflects subsistence intensification. Five dated DcRt-10 faunal assemblages underwent taxonomic and size classification, weighing and MNI calculation. Vertebrate weight and NISP percentages were compared between stratigraphic units associated with the later Gulf of Georgia and earlier Locarno Beach culture types. The youngest assemblage contains a smaller proportion of land mammal bone, suggesting increased sea mammal, fish, and bird procurement. Faunal remains also suggest a greater variety of taxa exploited over time. Faunal assemblages suggest that culture type change at DcRt-10 is the product of subsistence change, increasing knowledge of the culture historic sequence of this region.