North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (318 Records)
Isotopic studies allow for a more refined look at variation in diet and mobility among individuals. These studies have been used in California as a proxy for analyzing human behavioral adaptations. In this study we use stable isotope analyses of human bone collagen and apatite to evaluate diet of individuals from sites within the Sacramento River basin over time. Ethnographic accounts from this area emphasize the importance of mass salmon procurement and describe high levels of social...
Monumentality in the Hunter-Gatherer-Fisher Landscapes of the Greater San Francisco Bay, California (2016)
This paper examines the construction of impressive mounded landscapes along the greater San Francisco Bay in Late Holocene and Historic times.The authors address some of the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the investigation of extensive accretional shell mound complexes that were built up over multiple centuries. In evaluating questions about how and why these monumental landscapes were constructed, they present recent findings from the study of both large and small sized...
Mound-building, Site Structure, and Land Use Patterns in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (2017)
Mound sites are a notable characteristic of mid- to late-Holocene occupation throughout the Central California. Most recent archaeological research on the region’s mounds has focused on the their dense clustering along the San Francisco Bay margins; in contrast, much less attention has been focused on the mounds of the adjacent Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Although often grouped together, few systematic studies have been undertaken to evaluate differing site patterning, the structure of...
"A Mourning Dirge was Sung": Community and Remembrance at Mission San Gabriel (2015)
Recent research at Mission San Gabriel (CA-LAN-184H), conducted in collaboration with descendant communities, has identified two major types of Mission-period features related to communal mourning. In addition to the known practice of interring and memorializing the deceased in the Mission’s cemetery, archaeological data recovery excavation has identified a series of artifact-filled pits that have much in common with prehistoric and historic Native American mourning features that have been...
Mystery in Grapevine Canyon: Gender and Ethnicity in a Historic Period Site. (2015)
The Grapevine Archeological District in Death Valley National Park contains evidence of prehistoric and ethnohistoric occupation. The district also overlaps with the Death Valley Scotty Historic District. A road realignment project in 2014 led to the discovery of a historic period site that appeared to be a mining camp with features and artifacts typically associated with tasks performed by men. Surface features and artifacts included a forge and hand-forged axes; a mining claim cairn marked the...
The National Register Nomination for CA-LAN-1, the Tank Site, a Millingstone Horizon site in Topanga State Park, Los Angeles CA (2015)
CA-LAN-1, the Tank Site, located in Topanga State Park has been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. This paper will summarize the unique approach for the nomination because it considers eligibility for the site under both Criteria A and D. The Tank Site is eligible under Criterion A as an event because a major scientific discovery was made there during the archaeological field investigations from 1947-1960. The Tank Site is also eligible under Criterion D due to the fact that...
Native Irrigation in Owens Valley: The 2000 Year Back-story (2015)
Owens Valley is unique in that the Native Paiute were recorded as using irrigation to promote growth of certain crops such as taboose, Cyperus esculentus. This paper looks at the archaeological occurrence of the taboose tuber and other archaeobotanical remains in Owens Valley to explore the issue of whether Native irrigation would have made sense for this hunter-gatherer group. For roughly the last 2000 years of prehistory the Owens Valley archaeological record shows a cycle of alternating...
The Neolithic Houses of California – An ethnohistoric comparative perspective on household and community organization among complex hunter-gatherers (2015)
The talk addresses the built environment of complex hunter-gatherer villages of the contact period in California. Although not agriculturalists, they constitute one of the most diverse and well-documented amalgam of complex hunter-gatherers in the world. The study explores the interrelationship between vernacular architecture, households, community organization, and their socio-economic underpinnings. In doing so, highlighted case studies will include the Chumash of coastal southern California,...
New AMS dating sequences for the Chumash Ventureno Early Period: revisiting the question of antiquity of Ventureno Chumash inland occupation (2017)
The dating of sites within the Ventureno Chumash interior region has been robust for Late Period, but less well represented for the Early and Middle periods. We present here a suite of dates that document a well-established "complex of sites" that all date to the Early to Middle period located adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains and proximal to the Late Period ritual site of CA-VEN-632.
New Deal Archaeology at Buena Vista Lake in the San Joaquin Valley and the Sierra Madre Mountains: The 1933-34 CWA-Smithsonian Institution Project in Southern California (2015)
Perhaps the earliest Federal Civil Works Administration (CWA) archaeological project in California was conducted during the winter of 1933-34 at five sites along Buena Vista Lake in Kern County by the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), Smithsonian Institution. The project location was chosen for several reasons: mild winter climate, high number of unemployed men from nearby oil towns, and large, deep prehistoric sites. At the height of the excavations, the labor force amounted to 187 men. BAE...
Oh What a Tangled Web: The Symbolic Use of Road Trash to Advertise Drug Sales (2015)
This paper summarizes eight years of ethnoarchaeological research into the material consequences of drug-trafficking behavior. Tens of thousands of mundane trash items have been retrieved from roadway margins in a suburban setting, then sorted and analyzed. More than 175 artifact categories and pavement features are identified that carry subtle meaning for both buyer and seller. Artifactual, behavioral, and linguistic evidence has been assembled that links individual drug types to everyday...
Old Lumber is Missing: Artifacts from Stanford's Chinese Communities (2016)
As development in Silicon Valley fills what appears to be empty land, it is crucial to question how land became "empty." In the absence of memorials, other physical traces must be considered as legacies. This is the case with the Chinese employees who lived and worked at what became Stanford University, itself made possible by Chinese workers on the Transcontinental Railroad. Living on the campus at the turn of the twentieth century, the Chinese employees impacted the development of agriculture,...
An Overview of the Distribution of Clovis/Great Basin Concave Base Projectile Point Sites at Fort Irwin, San Bernardino County, California (2016)
Fort Irwin is a United States Army installation located approximately 37 miles northeast of Barstow, California, in the central Mojave Desert. Totaling 1,193 square miles in size, this installation has a wide variety of archaeological resources including at least four sites with recorded Clovis/Great Basin Concave Base projectile points and several isolated finds identified as Clovis points. The goal of this study, conducted by Redhorse Corporation on behalf of the Fort Irwin Cultural Resources...
Palimpsests in the Colonial Borderland at Black Star Canyon, Orange County, California. (2016)
The Santa Ana mountain landscape of contemporary Orange County, CA has been dichotomously characterized as “a wild colonial borderland” and “a prehistoric indigenous space” where the material and social histories of indigenous communities are ossified while legacies of Spanish, Mexican and American colonial society are both solidified and continued. Within this landscape, the Black Star Canyon village (CA-ORA-132) objectifies this historical disjunction in that the site constitutes a...
Past and Present Human Response to Drought in the American West (2015)
Multi-year droughts in the American west have major impacts on water resources and agricultural systems that sustain growing populations. Environmental engineering projects (e.g., California Aqueduct or Hoover Dam) were designed within the context of instrumental climate records and historical knowledge of the last century. Archaeological and climatological records now provide a longer-term perspective on the severity and longevity of droughts and the impact of these droughts on human...
The Past, Present, and Future of Archaeological Investigation on the BLM: An Introduction to Public Research on Public Lands. (2015)
The overall symposium provides a series of case examples that demonstrate the important role the BLM plays in promoting proactive non-compliance related archaeological research. This introductory paper sets the frame by offering direct experience from multiple perspectives working on BLM land as a field school student, graduate student researcher, volunteer, contractor, and agency archaeologist. This is done to provide additional context for how the BLM has typically supported archaeological...
Patriation: NAGPRA’s Regulations on Culturally Unidentifiable Human Remains, applied (2016)
In 2010, the promulgation of new regulations under 1990’s Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) threatened to upset the hard-won balance that had developed between the legitimate interests of descendant communities and the scientific and museum communities over the previous twenty years. Because the 10.11 rule broadly mandates the disposition of culturally unidentifiable human remains, many parties—including the Society for American Archaeology—reacted negatively,...
PATRÓN DE ASENTAMIENTO EN EL DESIERTO CENTRAL DE BAJA CALIFORNIA SUR "EL ESTUDIO DE SITIOS ARQUEOLÓGICOS QUE CONFORMAN UN CORREDOR SIERRA-OASIS-MAR" (2015)
Como parte de los trabajos de localización, registro y protección de sitios arqueológicos durante obras de construcción de una línea de transmisión y sus respectivas Subestaciones eléctricas propiedad de CFE, se realizaron una serie de prospecciones a lo largo de 133 km, logrando así adquirir un nuevo cúmulo de información sobre esta vasta región, que en suma a los proyectos de investigación previos por parte del INAH, fue posible identificar patrones de asentamiento vinculados a una serie de...
Pay Dirt in the Mojave Desert: An Assistance Agreement between Cal Poly Pomona and the California Bureau of Land Management (2015)
This paper reports on more than a decade of archaeological fieldwork conducted at two archaeological landscapes in the western Mojave Desert by Cal Poly Pomona undergraduate students on lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Ridgecrest Field Office. The majority of funding for the project was provided by a multi-year BLM Assistance Agreement. It represents an outstanding example of a "win-win" partnership between a university and government agencies. Students received training in...
Penetrating the Old Woman's Gun: A GPR and artifact analysis of a Mexican American War battlefield site (2015)
This paper will address the validity of the claim that the Battle of Rancho Dominguez (Battle of Old Woman’s Gun) took place on the lower terrace of the Rancho Dominguez. In the summer of 1846, the US military took control of Los Angeles. Soon after, the Mexican Army was able to regain the city. Captain Mervine, of the US military, landed his troops in San Pedro hoping to regain Los Angeles. Folk history tells of Captain Mervine’s troops being besieged in the early hours by Californios, wielding...
Perishable but not forgotten: the potential use of seaweeds on California's Channel Islands (2015)
California’s Channel Islands are surrounded by some of the most extensive and productive kelp forests on the planet with nearshore environments containing more than 100 species of edible seaweeds. Archaeological deposits testify to the use of kelp forests by native islanders, but there has been little discussion of seaweeds as a food resource. Ethnohistoric evidence that Channel Islanders consumed seaweeds is limited,but accounts of islander foodways in general are minimal. Ethnographic and...
Perishable Disparity: Mortuary treatment in Baja California Sur (2015)
Missionary and explorer accounts document status differences in adornment, possession of ceremonial items, and body proportions in the marine foraging populations of the Cape Region, Baja California Sur, Mexico. The antecedent and concurrent Las Palmas Culture (ca. A.D. 1200 to 1700) was originally defined by William Massey based on excavation of small exclusive-use mortuary caves. Each cave held one or two primary interments and several secondary bundle burials representing both sexes and all...
Persistence and Change: Evidence from the Indian Rancheria at the Third Mission Santa Clara de Asis (2015)
Recent archaeological excavations within the Indian Rancheria at Mission Santa Clara de Asís have uncovered a dense accumulation of Mission Period refuse, most conspicuously cattle bone. Analysis of these remains suggests a "matanza-like" event that was geared primarily toward supplying the indigenous community with beef. A variety of wild foods, especially fish and waterfowl, was also recovered. This variety suggests that mission Indians devoted considerable time, energy, and effort in securing...
Pictograph Handprint Analysis in Southern California--Stature and Gender Projections (2015)
Pictograph hand impressions (n=288) from 42 rock art loci in southern California were analyzed to infer the physical stature and gender of the most likely Native American participants against contemporary assertions of regional rock art style and function. The analytical underpinnings were as follows: anthropometric data of Mission Indians (Boas 1895); ethnographic accounts of young adolescent female participation (e.g., Oxendine 1980:39) and the statistical difference in female adult stature...
Plant Remains Assemblage in Santa Clara Valley (2015)
The Santa Clara Valley has an archaeobotanical record that spans from the central California Early, Middle, and Late periods. Sites CA-SCL-12, -478, -674, and -919 have robust plant remains assemblages from distinct periods that can be used to evaluate change in plant use and land-management practices. Temporal context and habitat will be compared for each site to understand variation in plant diversity and intensification. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for...