A growing consensus, emerging from multiple disciplines, suggests that anthropogenic actions have moved us into a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Current initiatives call upon experts in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to explore innovative approaches to address environmental challenges now occurring at greater scales and unmatched complexity. Our new NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates immerses students in an interdisciplinary research program, using data from modern fish sampling programs and archaeological collections to investigate evidence of the Anthropocene in the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). These efforts are particularly challenging due to inherent differences in the two data sources used. Modern sampling programs are designed to collect data that reflect the abundance and composition of fishes in the UMRS to the best of our ability. In contrast, fish data from archaeological collections represent the taxa captured and consumed by ancient humans. The characteristics of the sampling gear used, the habitats sampled, and the overall sampling design scheme affect modern fish monitoring data. Fish remains in archaeological data reflect the fishing technology used, human preference among fish taxa, culinary and meal discard decisions, centuries and millennia of fish bone preservation, and the aquatic environment and specific habitats fished. Although fishes represented in archaeological deposits must reflect the environment to some degree, it is less clear the extent to which human factors (e.g., fishing technology, preference, discard patterns, etc.) mask our ability to interpret how past fish communities and environmental conditions differed from today.
Results/Conclusions
Differences in the relative abundance of fish taxa were relatively consistent across latitude (e.g., from Wisconsin to Southern Illinois) and among archaeological time periods. Conducting multivariate comparisons between modern fish monitoring data and zooarchaeological data requires difficult decisions about the taxa to include in the analyses, which modern fishing methods should be used, the specific riverine habitats to examine (e.g., main channel, side channel, backwater lakes, etc.), which metrics (i.e., CPUE, relative abundance, presence/absence) are appropriate, and the transformation and manipulation of the combined modern and archaeological data set. Although there are unavoidable limits to the specific conclusions that can be made from these types of analyses, they may still yield useful information on deep-time community changes.