North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (318 Records)
The Mission Period in Spanish-Mexican California resulted in the breakdown of original independent native polities. Depopulation from introduced European diseases coupled with intermarriage between people from different tribal groups at the missions led to the disappearance of linguistic differences and the formation of new community identities named after the different missions. Alongside these processes of coalescence and ethnogenesis, political and traditional ceremonial activities...
Free or Despotic? The Distribution of Hunter-Gatherer Ethnolinguistic Groups in California (2015)
How do hunter-gatherers divide their landscape into territories? In this paper, I will delve into results from a prior study showing a significant difference in territory size between coastal and inland groups in California (Dennehy et al. 2014). I will first simulate territory sizes and locations using an Agent-Based Model (ABM) of hunter-gatherer bands. The model will draw on human behavioral ecology to simulate distribution of foraging groups under three different conditions of social...
A Freeway Through the Past: The Replacement of Doyle Drive through the Presidio of San Francisco National Historic Landmark (2015)
The historic south access road to the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, was known as Doyle Drive. It was identified as structurally and seismically deficient in the early 2000's and construction on its replacement began in 2009 by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). The Doyle Drive Project was unique in that it spanned the Presidio of San Francisco, a National Historical Landmark District, and that it involved several agency landholdings and stakeholders including the Presidio...
Freshwater Availability and Prehistoric Settlement Patterns on California’s Northern Channel Islands (2015)
An important variable that influenced prehistoric human settlement patterns on California’s northern Channel Islands was the availability of freshwater. Existing models of settlement use watershed size as a proxy for water availability. However, in semi-arid regions, this approach has limitations because ephemeral streams common in these environments may lose much or all of their flow to groundwater. We have developed a hydrological model that incorporates measured and modeled...
From Mining to Mercury: Preservation of the Historic Industrial Landscape of Jackson, California (2017)
Nestled in the foothills of the western Sierra, the city of Jackson in Amador County, California was the location of some the richest gold deposits mined in the Gold Rush era Mother Lode. Over the last few years, several projects have been initiated on this historic industrial landscape. The City of Jackson began raising funds to help preserve the uniquely stunning tailing wheels that have dominated the skyline for more than a century. Conversely, well beyond locally available funds is the...
Gathering Evidence: Terrestrial Plant Resources of California’s Islands (2015)
The abundance and diversity of terrestrial plant resources on the islands off the Pacific coast of southern Alta and Baja California vary in terms of island biogeographic distribution, ranging from pine forests and oak/juniper woodlands, to chaparral, cactus scrub and grassland habitats, among others. These plant resources provided food, medicine, and raw materials for island populations. However, island plant resources have long been described in the literature as "depauperate," an idea based...
Genetic data from the Transbay Man (2015)
We present genetic evidence isolated from the remains of the Transbay Man. We compare extracted genomic data to other available gneomic data, placing the Transbay Man in an evolutionary context with other human populations, including previously sequenced Amerindian remains. We discuss the challenges of working with preserved genetic material from warm and wet locations such as the San Francisco Bay Area. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology...
Geology, Historical Contingency, and Ecological Inheritance in California's Southern Sierra Nevada (2015)
The Late prehistoric archaeological record of the Southern Sierra Nevada can be distilled down to two very visible elements: bedrock mortars and obsidian. Both were imported from outside the area, with obsidian coming from the east and the idea of the bedrock mortar coming from the west. We argue that the presence of transported obsidian, much of it deposited prior to 1000 cal BP, and the later establishment of bedrock mortars encouraged more persistent use of this landscape. We see this as an...
Geometric morphometric assessment of cranial shape change in trigonocephaly (2015)
Investigating the only known prehistoric example of trigonocephaly, a condition thought to result from premature sutura frontalis fusion, we address cranial shape changes in this condition that have been previously limited in scope and based on living individuals. The individual derives from a prehistoric context on Santa Rosa Island (CA-SRI-24), dates to 1500-1650 AD, and is housed at the PHMA, UC Berkeley. Ninety-three 3D landmarks were collected from normal skulls for comparison (n=43, range...
Geometric morphometrics of California and bay mussels: an analysis using 3D geometric morphometric techniques (2015)
Mussel species comprise a substantial portion of dietary evidence from archaeological sites along the California coast. Most research has concentrated on harvesting, meat yields, and transport of California mussel (Mytilus californianus). Fewer studies have engaged with bay mussels (Mytilus trossulus) within the California archaeological record. Bay mussel harvesting, shell measurement methods, and meat yields have not been analyzed systematically. Our study used actualistic samples of both...
Getting into the Groove: Replicating the Southern California Cogged Stone (2015)
Cogged Stones are an ambiguous artifact often associated with Bolsa Chica in Orange County, California. Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., has been involved in the study of the Bolsa Chica mesa for over 30 years resulting in the longest privately funded cultural resource investigations in Southern California. This poster highlights one facet of SRSinc’s, current studies on the cogged stones. It has been purposed that the manufacture of cogged stones took place on the Bolsa Chica mesa at the...
GIS Model Development for Historic Census Data in San Francisco (2015)
This article demonstrates how to build historical data sets from the 1800-1900 San Francisco census/city directories, using GIS model to enhance the meaning of the census data and add a micro-depth, and to enable researchers to depict and analyze the spatial pattern of their study. The raw data of the census/city directories is organized according to addresses (parcels). The historic census GIS model integrates the city parcels to the census/city directories to spatially process and map the...
Ground-penetrating radar and terrestrial laser scanning reconstruction of the prison and Civil War era historic fortifications on Alcatraz Island (2015)
Between 2012 and 2013 we conducted a cultural resources assessment and historic preservation project with the National Park Service on Alcatraz Island using terrestrial laser scanning and ground-penetrating radar. Alcatraz is most (in)famous for its brief period as a Federal Penitentiary (1934-1963); however, for the vast majority of its history it was a military fortification – Fortress Alcatraz - under the U.S. Army. As the need for harbor defense diminished, the island was converted into a...
Healers Also Gather Acorns: Examining the Division of Labor and Power Dynamics among California Hunter-Gatherers (2016)
Previous theories concerning women’s access to roles of power within Native American Hunter-Gatherer societies have focused on linking such access to socially proscribed gender identities, role flexibility, and/or kinship systems. My work seeks to validate such models within the context of women’s access to the role of healer among California Hunter-Gatherer groups by looking to written records from the 1800s and ethnographies from the early 1900s. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis,...
Health and Mortuary Analysis of the Transbay skeleton (2015)
During the 2014 geothermal trenching for the Transbay Transit Center Project, a single burial was uncovered at approximately 1.8 meters below existing sea level, encased in estuarian clay. This anaerobic clay preserved the bone and associated artifacts almost perfectly. Radiocarbon dating placed this burial at ~7590 years BP, making it one of the oldest burials within the region. The young adult male was wrapped in a woven fibrous mat with numerous wood artifacts surrounding the legs and...
Historical Ecology and Management of Marine Estuaries: Paleoethnobotanical and fine grained constituent results from the Manila Site (CA-HUM-321), Humboldt Bay, Northwestern California (2017)
The Manila site (CA-HUM-321) is a stratified prehistoric midden site with a long history of use by the Wiyot people. This study, the first of its kind from Humboldt Bay, reveals the results of constituent analyses of excavated materials. Fine-grained analysis of dietary residues from Manila reveals the earliest documented (1,309 cal BP) evidence of mass harvested foods, smelt fishing, and intensive shellfish procurement on the North Coast of California. Paleoethnobotanical analysis of seeds and...
Holocene Precipitation Variability in Northern Baja California: Correlating Lithic Abundance and Climatic Change from Scorpion Shelter (2015)
In order to understand human adaptation to climatic regimes, I compare lithic assemblages and oxygen isotope values from kangaroo rat remains found at the hunter-gatherer shellfish-collecting site of Scorpion Shelter in coastal northwestern Baja California. Scorpion Shelter is important because it contains a continuous faunal record for a coastal community that spans from the terminal Pleistocene through the Holocene (~11,600 BP – present). Using Human Behavioral Ecology, we would expect to see...
Holocene Transformation of San Francisco Bay and Transbay Man Site Stratigraphy (2015)
San Francisco Bay was created by post-glacial sea-level rise during the span of prehistoric human occupation. The Bay is the single largest Pacific estuary in the Americas (4,160 square kilometers) and is the outlet for California’s largest freshwater drainage system that carries 40% of the state's runoff. The earliest known evidence of widespread human use of the estuary or tidal resources in the Bay Area first appears at shell midden sites located around the Bay in the middle Holocene...
Household Archaeology on the Northern Channel Islands of the Santa Barbara Coast, California (2015)
House depressions are visible at many archaeological sites on the Northern Channel Islands, including some that are thousands of years old, yet household archaeology is a topic that is often overlooked in the region. Documenting the number, size, location, and layout of house depressions can help in understanding past settlement strategies, access to resources, the emergence of cultural complexity, demography, cultural landscapes, environmental change, and craft specialization, among other...
Hunter-Gatherer Storage and Settlement: A View from the Central Sierra Nevada (2015)
Though optimal foraging theory is useful for examining hunter-gatherer subsistence decisions, food storage falls outside the scope of traditional models, because it separates foraging effort from consumption. The time that foragers spend accumulating a surplus for storage has the potential to conflict with the time they need for other activities during seasons of abundance, creating opportunity costs to storage. Changes in settlement strategies can alter these opportunity costs and affect...
An Ideal Free Settlement Perspective on Residential Positioning in the San Francisco Bay Area (2015)
We present an Ideal Free Distribution Model to explore the successful establishment and spread of hunter-gatherer residential settlements around the perimeter of San Francisco Bay, California. Our objective is to illuminate underlying ecological and social factors that best explain the spatial distribution of occupation in the region. Our model determines relative habitat suitability based on a series of environmental factors including drainage catchment size, rainfall, terrestrial productivity,...
Identifying Ground Stone Production at Bolsa Chica through Hammerstone Analysis (2015)
Debris attributed to the manufacture of groundstone implements are not always identified or collected. This can make groundstone production difficult to quantify through debitage analysis. Therefore, the identification of groundstone production often rests on the analysis of hammerstones. Recently Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., conducted an intensive technological analysis on the lithic assemblage from a well-known Millingstone Horizon site, located on the Bolsa Chica mesa, in Orange...
Impact of Rising Sea Levels on Native American Cultural Sites in Southern California (2015)
Humans arrived in Southern California about 13,000 years ago, shortly after sea level began rising following the last glaciation. Most of their sites along the shoreline of the time have been inundated and are unknown. Now hundreds of remaining sites on-shore are threatened, or will be threatened, in the foreseeable future by rising sea levels. A survey of prehistoric and historic human site elevations in Southern California reveals the 1.4 m rise in sea level expected in 2100 due only to the...
The Impact of War Clubs: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Conflict (2017)
This research focuses on the transformation of conflict from its earliest modes to more intensified forms seen in complex societies. Specifically, the focus is on the transition of combat in band level societies to its institutionalization in tribal social structures. One of the challenges in archaeology is in recognizing steps in the evolution of violence in formative and less stratified societies. To achieve this end, the transition of conflict needs to be operationalized. This investigation...
Importation of deer bone to the Channel Islands, California, during the Middle Holocene (2015)
Although California mule deer never inhabited the Channel Islands during prehistoric times, deer limb bone fragments commonly occur at Channel Islands sites dated to the Middle Holocene, and fragments of worked deer bone also occur. In addition, mortuary collections obtained in the 1920s dating to the Middle Holocene contain artifacts of deer bone, including ornaments and hair pins. We summarize the evidence of deer bone importation to the Channel Islands and argue that the abundance of deer...