Fishweirs: A World Perspective with Emphasis on the Fishweirs of Mississippi

Fishweirs is the first book ever devoted entirely to the long established, globally significant practice of harvesting masses of freshwater and coastal saltwater fishes by human beings. This book provides (1) an historical overview of the distribution, construction, and use of fishweirs worldwide, and particularly in North America; (2) a definition and description of different kinds of fishweirs and their construction and uses; (3) a review of legal aspects of the construction, maintenance, and use of fishweirs in North America historically, and their basis in English Law; (4) a detailed identification, description, and discussion of the fishweirs of Mississippi, both prehistoric and historic, as examples of the worldwide phenomenon of freshwater fish harvesting structures; (5) an extensive glossary of fishweir and mass fish harvesting terminology; (6) an extensive annotated bibliography of global literature on the subject of fishweirs, including many obscure and elusive references to the subject; and (7) more than 190 maps, diagrams, photographs, tables, and appendices. Fishweirs is substantive yet accessible. The book, one result of more than thirty years of research on the subject by the author, is an important reference volume; it will serve as a baseline from which future studies of fishweirs and the mass harvesting of freshwater and coastal saltwater fishes will depart; it will increase public awareness of what once was an important method of resource procurement and the surviving evidence of that activity; and it will guide historians, anthropologists, cultural and natural resource managers, and policymakers in identifying, evaluating, and assessing these distinctive elements of the cultural landscape. Fishweirs is Archaeological Report No. 33 of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.