North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
176-200 (318 Records)
Prehistoric resource depression has been widely documented in many late Holocene contexts characterized by expanding human population densities and some of the most detailed records of this phenomenon have been derived from the San Francisco Bay area of California. I summarize here recent analyses focusing on tule elk, waterfowl, and sturgeon from multiple regional sites using traditional zooarchaeological measures of resource depression but also those drawing on allometric size relationships,...
Legacies of Movement and Land Use in the Mojave Desert: An Intensive Study of Two Multi-Component Sites at Fort Irwin, San Bernardino County, California (2015)
Fort Irwin is a United States Army installation located approximately 37 miles northeast of Barstow in San Bernardino County, California. Covering an area of 1,193 square miles, Fort Irwin is roughly the size of Rhode Island. This large installation has a wide variety of archaeological resources, including two large, multi-component sites that were re-recorded by the Fort Irwin Cultural Resources Program in 2014. Bitter Spring (CA-SBR-2659/H) is a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)...
Legacy Collections in Public Education (2015)
Not all legacy collections are forgotten in dusty boxes. Some find new life in public education, offering non-archaeologists tangible connections to the past. Integrating legacy artifact and document collections with effective education techniques provides the opportunity to engage children and adults in archaeology. Through the case study of developing an interactive educational tour about pre-Contact Chumash at the Leonis Adobe Museum in Calabasas, this paper explores practical concerns...
Let’s Hear It for the Boy: Masculinity, Manhood, and Archaeologies of Gender (2017)
This paper will seek to explore how archaeological investigations of masculinity and manhood can contribute to contemporary theory on gender and sexuality. Drawing on material from a 19th century industrial work camp in Coastal California, I will argue that intersectionality provides promising avenues as both a theoretical paradigm and as a way to articulate archaeological work within a wider, multi-disciplinary discourse on gender. Methodological implications for archaeological engagements with...
A Life History of the Transbay Man as Reconstructed through Stable Isotope Analysis (2015)
By analyzing tissues that develop at different points in the life cycle, such as early-forming first molars and later-forming third molars, archaeologists can trace the dietary life histories of individuals from the past. Because environments differ in the food and water resources, these dietary patterns can also be linked to mobility patterns. This paper reconstructs a dietary and mobility life history of the 7600-year-old "Transbay Man" discovered in 2014 in downtown San Francisco, CA, a...
Life on Grove Street: Victorian Households in Hayes Valley, San Francisco (2015)
During the mid to late 19th Century, Hayes Valley was a San Francisco neighborhood transitioning from working to middle class. Residents included European immigrants and transplants from other parts of the US. Many families rented the single and multifamily residences that lined the streets. In 2013, Pacific Legacy, Inc. conducted testing and archaeological monitoring excavations for the construction of a multistory building on Grove Street in the Hayes Valley. These investigations unearthed...
Lithic Material Sources and Implications for Trade and Travel through the Smith River Basin in Northwest California (2015)
Excavations at the Hurdy Gurdy Bridge site (CA-DNO-1028) recovered a collection of lithic artifacts representing both local and exotic sources of material. Identification of both probable and definitive source locations indicates transportation of lithic material occurred from coastal, Klamath Mountains, south-central Oregon, and north-central California regions. Obsidian subjected to OH and XRF analysis from Hurdy Gurdy Bridge site along with sites located at the confluence of the Middle and...
Local or Non-local: Reassessing Material Exchange in Southern California (2015)
Previous studies on material exchange have provided valuable insights about the complexity of long-distance networks once established by prehistoric cultures. Fueled by the presence of middlemen throughout the region, these elaborate and intricate networks of interaction and trade allowed easier acquisition and exchange of materials (local and non-local) over the years. Given the extensiveness of materials (i.e. lithics, beads, ochre) repeatedly entering and exiting Southern California by land...
Looking at the Cosmopolitan Community of the Pueblo of San Diego in the Mexican Period in California: 1821-1846 (2015)
Following the successful conclusion of the Mexican Revolution, many soldiers from the old Spanish Presidio of San Diego moved down the hill to found a civil pueblo. The soldiers themselves represented a diverse background of people from Mexico to which were added local Native Americans as wives and, more often, as servants. With the opening of the province of California to foreigners under the new Mexican regime, a variety of men of European and American descent including merchants and sailors...
A "Lost" Collection Makes Its Way Home: The Long Road of the Lost Village of Encino (2015)
When a major village site was encountered during construction monitoring in the early 1980s, newspapers declared that the "Lost Village of Encino" had at last been found. In reality, archaeologists suspected its presence since the 1950s based on descriptions of the Portolá expeditions of 1769 and 1770. The resulting archaeological data recovery produced a large collection of artifacts, as well as human and animal burials. Subsequent disputes between the developer, archaeologists, the Native...
The Luxury Of Cold: The Natural Ice Industry In Boca, California: 1868-1927 (2017)
Before the invention of refrigeration and electrically produced ice, naturally harvested ice was an important seasonal commodity for food storage and heat regulation. In 1852, Boston ice was shipped to San Francisco and sold as a luxury. High demand soon led entrepreneurs to look for closer sources of ice, first in Russian controlled Alaska, and then in the Californian Sierra Nevada Mountains along the newly-completed transcontinental railroad line. The railroad transported ice to customers,...
Maintenance of Tribal Communities in the California Spanish Missions (2015)
In this symposium, we have been tasked with investigating how communities were forged during the Mission Period in California (1769-1834). Some researchers currently suggest that diverse indigenous populations in mission communities formed collective Indian communities and identities (e.g. Lightfoot 1998; Panich 2009; Peelo 2009). However, others maintain that indigenous peoples were not only part of a mission community, but they were simultaneously part of diverse traditional village...
Making Ancient Birds Sing: Avian Archaeology on the California Channel Islands. (2015)
Terrestrial and marine environments of the California Channel Islands harbor a wide array of residential birds and provide breeding grounds and layovers for migratory species. Avian remains have been uncovered in paleontological and archaeological contexts, providing a long and continuous record of their presence. Although some species have persisted, others have disappeared at various points in time due to extinctions or alterations in migratory pathways. Though avian remains contain abundant...
Making Community in the Colonial Hinterland of Coastal Marin County, California (2015)
From the first baptism in 1783 to the last recorded baptism in 1832, at least 2,800 Coast Miwoks from the Marin Peninsula entered Spanish missions in the San Francisco Bay area. Understandably, and like most accounts of Indian entanglements with Spanish missions, the story of Coast Miwok missionization and assumed cultural loss is told through the documents and trowel work at Spanish missions. Comparably less is known of the world beyond the mission walls and in the hinterlands that took shape...
Mapping Prehistoric Behavior Patterns at Lithic Toolstone Source in the Colorado Desert (2017)
This pilot study examines lithic artifact scatters recorded in the Colorado Desert of California. The data set used in this research was compiled from several Cultural Resource Management (CRM) projects that have taken place in the study area. Tierra Environmental Services of San Diego collected large portions of data located on cobblestone terraces in Imperial County, California between 2011 and 2013 (smaller sections have been recorded by various environmental consulting firms since the mid...
Maritime Households in San Francisco (2015)
In its work in the neighborhoods in the South of Market area of San Francisco the Anthropological Studies Center of Sonoma State University acquired a database of 14 assemblages from households associated with the maritime sector of San Francisco’s economy. Because of this sector’s centrality within the city’s economy, maritime workers are a dominant element in social and labor histories of the city. They are not, however, so visible in the archaeological record. In this paper, we present recent...
Markers of Time: Exploring Transitions in Artifacts and Burial Practices at Bolsa Chica, Orange County, California (2017)
The transition of artifacts recovered from the Bolsa Chica Mesa indicate changes in site use through different temporal periods. Early (9000-7500 BP) Bivalve Tivela beads give way to Olivella spire/end modified, then to Olivella Grooved Rectangle (OGR) beads (5500-4500BP). Transitions in bead type and manufacture can be linked to the changing coastline conditions, availability of resources, and the influx of new populations. Further, the burial practices found at the Bolsa Chica Mesa sites...
Marking the Sacred: Reading between the abraded lines of Mission San Miguel the Arcángel. (2015)
The Californian Spanish colonial community of Mission San Miguel the Arcángel consisted primarily of Salinan, Tulare native populations and included neophyte Indians from previously established Missions of San Luis Obispo and San Antonio. Within the Mission Church examples of 19th century "graffiti" can be found etched throughout the sanctified interior. Researchers have suggested that specific sections of these stylized markings are analogous to California Indian rock art with parallels being...
Marking the Sacred: Rock Art Images in an Unusual Context (2016)
Rock art images, generally associated with outdoor landscapes and boulders occur in an unexpected context and very sacred space in the California Spanish colonial community of Mission San Miguel the Arcángel. The Mission Community consisted primarily of Salinan and Tulare native populations and included neophyte Indians from previously established nearby Missions. It has been suggested that images found etched throughout the sanctified interior are analogous to California Indian rock art with...
A Matter of Time – Applications of portable X-Ray Fluorescence in establishing rock art chronologies (2015)
The aim in this examination was to examine the potential for portable XRF technology to contribute to chronologies of in situ rock art. In order to do this pXRF data from Chumash rock art panels in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California were compared with one another, and with readings from ochre found in excavated deposits. These ochre deposits are associated with other artefacts which have known dates. The results showed that multiple pigments were used within each rock art panel...
Memory and life in ninteenth-century Sacramento (2016)
In 1979, a trunk of artifacts was discovered concealed within a Sacramento house. The artifacts, photographs, and documents pertain primarily to the life of May Woolsey, who died in 1879 at age twelve. This paper seeks to investigate the assemblage and explore how interpretations involving memory can contribute towards an understanding of identity, childhood, and biography. The association of the artifacts in the assemblage, the curation of the artifacts, and the context of the trunk all have...
Men at Work: Economic Complexity and Exploitation of Dietary Marine Protein Sources in the San Francisco Bay Area (2015)
In the San Francisco Bay Area, distinct dietary niches were exploited in prehistory, and these different food economies are most readily distinguished in terms of their primary protein sources. This paper highlights the use of external auditory exostoses (EAE), a pathology linked to the exploitation of marine resources in cold water, to evaluate varying economic complexity in acquisition of marine protein food sources between different sites around the Bay Area. The high occurrence of EAE in...
Micromorphological Studies from the Clear Lake Basin California (2015)
Geoarchaeology has a wide range of applications for the understanding of the past. Within geoarchaeology, since the 1980s, micromorphological analysis has become a more common worldwide research tool for the study of soils from archaeological sites because it can play an important role in understanding site formation through the research of human waste, occupation debris, fuel residues and animal waste. It can serve as an aid in the reconstruction of human occupation, help identify economic...
A Mid-19th Century Lighter from San Francisco Bay’s Yerba Buena Cove: Context, Documentation and Conservation (2015)
In 2013, WSA recovered a well-preserved Gold Rush Era lighter from the original shore of Yerba Buena Cove. This class of boat, used to load and unload ships where there is no adequate harbor, was used extensively in San Francisco prior to the completion of sufficient deep-water wharfs in the 1860s. This paper contextualizes the use of lighters in frontier San Francisco and presents new insights into the construction of the recovered lighter gained from the creation of a 1:12 scale model. The...
Mitigation of the Alder Creek Mining District, Sacramento County, California (2017)
The mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) Regulatory Program is to protect the Nation's aquatic resources while allowing reasonable development through fair and balanced permit decisions. The Corps consults with permit applicants and other consulting parties, in a collaborative effort, to develop appropriate mitigation measures when adverse effects to historic properties cannot be avoided. A new development was proposed that would adversely affect the National Register of Historic...