IN THE COLUMBIA PLATEAU

Abstract Approved: The presence and significance of salmon for prehis-toric and aboriginal people of the Columbia Plateau is a matter of considerable debate among anthropologists, archaeologists and historians. Data from over 100 arch-aeological sites are scrutinized in the light of an ex-ample salmon fishery developed from ethnographic and archaeological information on aboriginal salmon dependen-cies and exploitation in the locale of The Dalles on the central Columbia. The research incorporates a cultural ecology orientation. Data from prehistoric sites of the Columbia Plateau do not conform precisely to The Dalles fishery example and strongly suggest both a temporal and spatial variation in salmon use and cultural patterning and therefore call to question the presumption of the primary relevancy of salmon to cultural patterning throughout the Plateau. Other resources, including especially botanical species, appear to have an importance too often overlooked. Other riverine and terrestrial mammal food resources are presumed to have a lesser prehistoric importance, though the archaeological record actually supports the importance of resources other than salmon as having per-vasive affects on cultural patterning in the Columbia Plateau. Data show that it was not until recent times that salmon occurrence had the effect on cultural systems that has been observed in historic times