About

Thomas Wake is an Associate Adjunct Professor in the UCLA Department of Anthropology. His research focuses on archaeological and zooarchaeological investigations along the eastern Pacific Rim, with particular interests in food and ethnicity, the development of social complexity, and neotropical archaeology. His work encompasses studies in Caribbean Panama, historical archaeology, natural history, human paleoecology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, and comparative osteology. Wake serves as the Director of the Zooarchaeology Lab at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and has contributed to understanding ecological baselines, social organization, and subsistence strategies through his archaeological research. His academic background includes a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, obtained in 1995.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Geography
• Political Science
• Biology
• Paleontology
• Sociology
• Demography
• Ancient history
• History
• Cartography
• Geology
• Economic geography
• Fishery
• Genetics
• Ecology

Selected publications

• Prehistoric archives reveal evidence of predator loss and prey release in Caribbean reef fish communities

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-06-30 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Understanding how humans have altered coral reef food webs remains challenging due to the absence of prehistoric baselines. Here, we use fish remains preserved in fossil and archaeological deposits from Panamá and the Dominican Republic to explore how Caribbean reef fish mortality patterns have changed over millennia. By quantifying accumulation rates of shark dermal denticles (scales) and bony fish otoliths (ear stones) in reef sediments, we assess relative fish abundance, while otolith size serves as a proxy for body size at death. Comparisons of these death assemblages suggest a 75% decline in shark-derived material and a 22% reduction in the sizes of human-targeted fishes-consistent with historical exploitation. This evidence of decline in large-bodied, higher trophic level fish remains coincided with a doubling in prey fish otolith accumulation and a 17% increase in their reconstructed body sizes. These patterns in time-averaged death assemblages align with effects of release from predation, documenting an often assumed (but rarely shown) cascading effect. In contrast, otoliths of predator-sheltered cryptobenthic fishes showed no change in either accumulation or size, suggesting that ''bottom-up"environmental factors were not responsible for the observed changes. Together, these data indicate that pre-exploitation predator communities strongly controlled exposed prey fishes, but this "top-down" effect diminishes rapidly toward the food chain base, especially in predator-resistant groups. Understanding trophic cascades on Caribbean reefs requires studying systems before predator depletion.

  PublisherDOI

• Kent Lightfoot and the Zooarchaeology of Traditional Foodways in California

  Berghahn Books · 2024-01-06

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 5. Kent Lightfoot and the Zooarchaeology of Traditional Foodways in California

  Berghahn Books · 2024-01-24

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Sacred offerings and secular foods on Reao Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago, East Polynesia

  Archaeology in Oceania/Archæology & physical anthropology in Oceania · 2024-01-10 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT In 1976, Yosihiko H. Sinoto conducted extensive archaeological survey and excavations on Reao Atoll, Tuamotu Archipelago as part of a Japanese, multi‐disciplinary expedition led by Prof. Sachiko Hatanaka. Primarily excavating three marae and four habitation sites totalling ∼180 m 2 , more than 25000 vertebrate remains were recovered. We report the jidentification and analysis of the fauna and contrast the inventories from secular and sacred contexts inferring the ritual use of pig, dog, turtle and tuna (Scombridae), as well as identifying relatively larger parrotfish (Scaridae), groupers (Serranidae), snappers (Lutjanidae), the Humphead wrasse ( Cheilinus undulatus ) and sharks/rays (Elasmobranchii) on marae. With a suite of 11 new AMS age determinations, we report the first directly dated precontact records for pig and dog and anchor the marae chronology possibly beginning in the thirteenth century. The 800 calBP dates imply that at least one of the Tuamotu atolls may have emerged nearly two centuries prior to the hypothesised ‘cross‐over’ date of 600 BP. Consequently, the earliest chronology of atoll emergence along the 1000 km length of the Tuamotus might vary, thus providing landscapes for human colonisation at slightly different times which has implications for the speed and tempo of colonisation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Corrigendum: Impacts of a non-indigenous ecosystem engineer, the American beaver (Castor canadensis), in a biodiversity hotspot

  Frontiers in Conservation Science · 2023-10-17

  erratumOpen access

  CORRECTION article Front. Conserv. Sci., 17 October 2023Sec. Animal Conservation Volume 4 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2023.1269778

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Investigations at an eroded shell midden reveal direct evidence for fur seal hunting and diverse subsistence strategies on Late Holocene Santa Rosa (Wima) Island, California

  The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology · 2023-05-08 · 7 citations

  article

  Sea level rise and marine erosion threaten coastal archaeological sites around the world, forcing difficult decisions about how to prioritize which sites to document and analyze. Here we present the results of research at a heavily eroded Late Holocene shell midden at CA-SRI-26, Santa Rosa Island, California. Systematic surface collection and radiocarbon dating of the site revealed an assemblage that is about 1400 years old and contains a variety of shellfish, bird, fish, and mammal remains, stone and bone tools, and matted sea grass (Phyllospadix sp.). Of the more remarkable finds is a humerus from a subadult Guadalupe fur seal (Arctocephalis towndsendi) with a projectile point tip lodged in the bone. This rare archaeological example of direct marine mammal hunting and other evidence for diverse marine foraging activities demonstrate the research value of eroded sites threatened by rising seas around the world.

  PublisherDOI

• Lessons for conservation from beneath the pavement

  Conservation Biology · 2022-09-07 · 7 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Monkeys on the Islands and Coasts of Paradise

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2022-08-03 · 2 citations

  book-chapter

  This chapter presents a comprehensive review of the interaction between circum-Caribbean indigenous peoples and nonhuman primates before and at early European contact. It fills significant gaps in contemporary scholarly literature by providing an updated archaeological history of the social and symbolic roles of monkeys in this region. We begin by describing the zooarchaeological record of primates in the insular and coastal circum-Caribbean Ceramic period archaeological sites. Drawing from the latest archaeological investigations that use novel methods and techniques, we also review other biological evidence of the presence of monkeys. In addition, we compile a list of indigenously crafted portable material imagery and review rock art that allegedly depicts primates in the Caribbean. Our investigation is supplemented by the inclusion of written documentary sources, specifically, ethnoprimatological information derived from early ethnohistorical sources on the multifarious interactions between humans and monkeys in early colonial societies. Finally, we illustrate certain patterns that may have characterized interactions between humans and monkeys in past societies of the circum-Caribbean region (300–1500 CE), opening avenues for future investigations of this topic.

  PublisherDOI

• Modern, archaeological, and paleontological DNA analysis of a human‐harvested marine gastropod ( <i>Strombus pugilis</i> ) from Caribbean Panama

  Molecular Ecology Resources · 2021 · 18 citations

  • Biology
  • Paleontology
  • Archaeology

  Although protocols exist for the recovery of ancient DNA from land snail and marine bivalve shells, marine conch shells have yet to be studied from a paleogenomic perspective. We first present reference assemblies for both a 623.7 Mbp nuclear genome and a 15.4 kbp mitochondrial genome for Strombus pugilis, the West Indian fighting conch. We next detail a method to extract and sequence DNA from conch shells and apply it to conch from Bocas del Toro, Panama across three time periods: recently-eaten and discarded (n = 3), Late Holocene (984-1258 before present [BP]) archaeological midden (n = 5), and mid-Holocene (5711-7187 BP) paleontological fossil coral reef (n = 5). These results are compared to control DNA extracted from live-caught tissue and fresh shells (n = 5). Using high-throughput sequencing, we were able to obtain S. pugilis nuclear sequence reads from shells across all age periods: up to 92.5 thousand filtered reads per sample in live-caught shell material, 4.57 thousand for modern discarded shells, 12.1 thousand reads for archaeological shells, and 114 reads in paleontological shells. We confirmed authenticity of the ancient DNA recovered from the archaeological and paleontological shells based on 5.7× higher average frequency of deamination-driven misincorporations and 15% shorter average read lengths compared to the modern shells. Reads also mapped to the S. pugilis mitochondrial genome for all but the paleontological shells, with consistent ratios of mitochondrial to nuclear mapped reads across sample types. Our methods can be applied to diverse archaeological sites to facilitate reconstructions of the long-term impacts of human behaviour on mollusc evolutionary biology.

  PublisherDOI

• The End of the Archaic in the Soconusco Region of Mesoamerica

  Routledge eBooks · 2021 · 9 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Geography
  • Ancient history
  • History

  The transition from Archaic to Formative, around 1900 (cal) bc, has traditionally been understood as the moment in which sedentism, well-fired ceramic containers, and a subsistence system focused on maize agriculture emerged together in multiple regions across Mesoamerica. This chapter presents a descriptive model of transformations in settlement and subsistence in that region at the end of the Archaic and during the second millennium. Most work on subsistence in the Soconusco region during the second millennium bc has focused on evidence from village sites. The establishment of sedentary villages in the Soconusco region of Mesoamerica required expansion of the breadth of diets and exploitation of a wide range of habitats. The triad of sedentism, ceramics, and agriculture traditionally associated with the initial Formative needs a variety of qualifications.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Torben C. Rick

  National Museum of Natural History

  18 shared

• Leslie Reeder-Myers

  Temple University

  17 shared

• Kenneth W. Gobalet

  California State University, Bakersfield

  16 shared

• Nicholas P. Jew

  University of Oregon

  13 shared

• Christopher B. Wolff

  12 shared

• Richard G. Lesure

  9 shared

• John M. Hash

  Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

  9 shared

• Douglas J. Kennett

  7 shared

Labs

• Zooarchaeology Lab, Cotsen Institute of ArchaeologyPI

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of California Berkeley

  1995

• M.A., Anthropology

  University of California Berkeley

  1988

• BA, History

  University of California Berkeley

  1986

Awards & honors

• National Science Foundation
• Secretaria Nacinal de Ciencia y Tecnologia-Panama
• American Philosophical Society, Franklin Research Grant
• Ahmanson Field Research Grant