Archaeological research is radically transforming the view that the Amazon basin and surrounding areas witnessed limited societal development before European contact. Nevertheless, uncertainty remains on the nature of the subsistence systems and the role that aquatic resources, terrestrial mammalian game, and plants had in supporting population growth, geographic dispersal, cultural adaptations and political complexity during the later stages of the pre-Columbian era. This is exacerbated by the general paucity of archaeological human remains enabling individual dietary reconstructions. Here we use stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of bone collagen to reconstruct the diets of human individuals from São Luís Island (Brazilian Amazon coast) dated between ca. 1800 and 1000 cal BP and associated with distinct ceramic traditions. We expanded our analysis to include previously published data from Maracá and Marajó Island, in the eastern Amazon. Quantitative estimates of the caloric contributions from food groups and their relative nutrients using a Bayesian Mixing Model revealed distinct subsistence strategies, consisting predominantly of plants and terrestrial mammals and variably complemented with aquatic resources. This study offers novel quantitative information on the extent distinct food categories of polyculture agroforestry systems fulfilled the caloric and protein requirements of Late Holocene pre-Columbian populations in the Amazon basin.

Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus; BFT) is a large (up to 3.3 m in length) pelagic predator which has been exploited throughout the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean since prehistoric times, as attested by its archeological remains. One key insight derivable from these remains is body size, which can indicate past fishing abilities, the impact of fishing, and past migration behavior. Despite this, there exists no reliable method to estimate the size of BFT found in archeological sites. Here, 13 modern Thunnus spp. skeletons were studied to provide power regression equations that estimate body length from vertebra dimensions. In modern specimens, the majority of BFT vertebrae can be differentiated by their morphological features, and thus, individual regression equations can be applied for each rank (position in vertebral column). In an archeological context, poor preservation may limit one's ability to identify rank; hence, "types" of vertebrae were defined, which enable length estimates when rank cannot be determined. At least one vertebra dimension, height, width, or length correlated highly with body length when vertebrae were ranked (R 2 > 0.97) or identified to types (R 2 > 0.98). Whether using rank or type, length estimates appear accurate to approximately ±10%. Finally, the method was applied to a sample of Roman-era BFT vertebrae to demonstrate its potential. It is acknowledged that further studies with larger sample sizes would provide more precision in BFT length estimates.

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Marine resources have been exploited in the eastern Mediterranean for millennia, forming an important dietary resource for many coastal settlements. Being highly organoleptic fishes, groupers represent one of the most ubiquitous ichthyofaunal finds since the Neolithic in eastern Mediterranean archeological contexts. Groupers (Epinephelidae) are large, solitary, apex predatory fishes found globally in coastal rocky reef ecosystems in temperate, subtropical, and tropical marine waters. Due to various life history traits such as slow time to maturity, sequential hermaphroditism, and the formation of spawning aggregations, groupers are particularly vulnerable to the effects of overfishing. They have been heavily fished in the eastern Mediterranean leading to several species being classified as 'vulnerable' and 'endangered' by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Abundant, large predators, such as groupers, are essential for maintaining healthy ecosystems. Their high frequency in Mediterranean archaeological contexts and importance to marine ecosystems makes them key taxa for gaining long term perspectives on local fishing in the eastern Mediterranean and for establishing historical baselines.This work employs three methods to gain long term perspectives on grouper fisheries as well as to establish historical ecological baselines for Mediterranean groupers in the Levant (Chapter 2). The material analysed for this thesis comprises fish bones from three eastern Mediterranean coastal archaeological sites. The bulk of material studied comes from Kinet Höyük (ca. 3000 -50 BC and 8/9 th c. -14 th c. AD), located in the most northeastern corner of the Mediterranean Sea in Iskenderun Bay, Turkey with additional material coming from two coastal sites located in present day Lebanon, Tell el-Burak (975 -334 BC) and Tell Fadous-Kfarabida (ca. 3000 -1550 BC). Osteometrics were used to analyse grouper and comber (fishes with similar ecology to groupers which are osteomorphologically indistinguishable from groupers) bones from all three sites to reconstruct catch sizes in the past and assess for fluctuations in the size structure of past grouper populations. Stable isotopes analysis, ẟ 13 C and ẟ 15 N, of archaeological fish bones was undertaken to reconstruct the foraging ecology of ancient marine ichthyofauna in the eastern Mediterranean with a special emphasis on groupers. Lastly,