North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (318 Records)
This paper presents an overview of the site structure within the confines of Cache Cave with a particular focus on excavated crevices, deposits, and features. We also present the results of 25 AMS dates so far submitted from the site. These dates include a range of material from basketry, cordage, matting, reeds, bone objects, and charcoal. In total, this program represents the most comprehensively dated Chumash cache cave assemblage yet achieved and yields important data regarding site usage...
California’s Channel Islands as a Model System for Understanding the Historical Ecology of Islands (2016)
Islands around the world have served as important model systems for understanding a host of cultural and environmental issues. Here we synthesize our long-term research program on the historical ecology and archaeology of California’s Channel Islands. Drawing on zooarchaeological, paleoethnobotanical, genetic, stable isotope, and other datasets we document a 13,000 year sequence of human environmental interactions from coastal foragers to early historical ranchers and modern conservationists....
Calories, Canoes, and Cross-Channel Trade: Exploring the Efficiency of Maritime Subsistence Exchange (2015)
The exchange of botanical subsistence resources such as nuts and seeds is well documented in ethnohistoric accounts of Chumash trade across the Santa Barbara Channel. But on what scale was such exchange carried out? Due to the perceived marginality of island environments, it has long been assumed that the need to import subsistence goods from the mainland to the islands was a central instigator for cross-channel exchange. Recent research, however, has shown that the islands were...
Caring for the Honuukvetam Pimuu've: Lessons from the Metropole Project, Avalon, Catalina Island, California (2015)
While conducting necessary structural upgrades to the electrical system in the City of Avalon on Catalina Island, Southern California Edison (SCE) came upon Gabrielino (Tongva) ancestral remains. The ancestral remains were considered a possibility since the work was within the boundaries of a known village site (CA-SCAI-29) and the location had produced ancestral remains in the past. Prior to the start of the project, SCE consulted and worked with the Most Likely Descendant (MLD), as identified...
Ceramic Distribution, Migration, and Social Interaction at Mine Wash, a Late Prehistoric (1300-200 BP) Seasonal Habitation Site in San Diego County, California (2015)
We selected 40 pottery samples from different levels within three separate excavation units at the site of Mine Wash (CA-SDI-813, 1100-310 BP) in central Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. The composition of these small, undecorated sherds was characterised by a combination of thin section petrography and INAA. This was compared to a now extensive petrographic and geochemical database of ceramics and raw materials from the San Diego region. Our analysis reveals a compositionally diverse assemblage...
Ceramic Production, Supply, and Exchange in the San Francisco Presidio Jurisdiction (2015)
In the late eighteenth century Spain occupied the San Francisco Bay Area and rapidly transformed the region through the introduction of agriculture, animal husbandry, Roman Catholicism, the Spanish language and the use of pottery. This presentation focuses on the latter, and considers the questions surrounding local manufacture, importation, and exchange of ceramics among the missions, presidio and pueblos of the San Francisco Presidio Jurisdiction. Through the application of instrumental...
Ceremonial Practices, Feasts, and Persistent Places: A Ritually Mounded Landscape Constructed by Hunter-gatherers in Southern California (2017)
Shellmounds have not been recognized as prominent ritual features in southern California, despite evidence to the contrary. The largest extant shellmound in the region is on Santa Cruz Island, measures 270 by 210 meters (roughly 45,000 m² in area), is 8 m higher than the terrace it rests on, is covered with 50 house depressions, and dates to 6000-2500 BP. In the 1920s, three cemeteries were excavated at the top of El Montón; one young woman stood out among the over 200 individuals in that she...
The Challenges of Dealing with Multiple Sets of Human Remains in the Cultural Resource Management Setting where Tribal Resources are Limited (2017)
Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to excavate a couple of large sites in California, working on behalf of a developer to keep their project in compliance with their permit. In conjunction, I also worked with the local tribe to resolve their burial issues with each excavation. During these two excavations, I have had to opportunity to observe the challenges that the tribe encountered when dealing with fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects where burial retrieval...
Changes Palates and Resources: Modeling Diachronic Plant Use in Prehistoric California (2015)
Despite considerable diversity in plant communities across coastal and inland California, the region’s hunter-gatherers often have been viewed as having broadly similar plant resource orientation. This paper reassess this perspective by explicitly examining spatial and temporal variation in plant use west of the Sierra Nevada. In doing so, the study capitalized on a growing body of paleoethnobotanical data to explore similarities and differences in plant food resource emphasis across six main...
Charcoal Identification as Means of Central California Landscape Reconstruction (2015)
The purpose of my paper is to present a paleoethnobotanical study of a late prehistoric Central California site (located in Sonoma County) that reconstructs the pre-contact landscape via the identification of wood charcoal remains. The analysis of charcoal and the low-impact paleoethnobotancial methodologies utilized in this study provide the basis for generating hypotheses about how Native peoples interacted with the local environment while also considering how the landscape may have changed...
Charmstones, Pendants, and other Special Objects from San Clemente Island, CA (2016)
This poster presents information on charmstones, pendants and other specially curated objects recovered during a recent site-recording project undertaken by ASM Affiliates for the U,S. Navy on San Clemente Island, California. I report on several rare artifacts, including four pendants (two stone and two abalone), steatite effigies, a ceramic object, and several marine mammal ear bones. These finds represent rare or previously un-recorded artifact types on San Clemente Island. I discuss the...
Childhood Diet and Foraging in Prehistoric Central California (2015)
Ethnographic evidence demonstrates that hunter-gatherer children may forage effectively, where ecology, subsistence strategies, and social organization are conducive to juvenile participation. We hypothesize that, in easily navigated environments with food items accessible to children, juveniles will engage in assistive or independent foraging after a period of exclusive post-weaning parental provisioning, and that differences in male and female diets will reflect the sexual division of labor...
Chinigchinich Ritual Practice among the Tongva: Exploring Patterns of Colonial Consumption and Revitalization (2017)
The Mission Period in Alta California (AD 1769-1834) radically changed the lives of indigenous people such as the Tongva. The strict discipline of the Franciscans’ enculturation program in the missions contrasted with the relative autonomy of Tongva people on San Clemente Island. Evidence of ritual practice of the Chinigchinich religion at sites such as Lemon Tank on San Clemente Island suggests continuity in Tongva ritual practice into the Mission Period. At the same time, Spanish missionaries...
A Civil War Period Ossuary Pit, Point San Jose Hospital Site, San Francisco (2015)
The United States Army reactivated Point San Jose, a military base established by Spanish in 1776, during the Civil War to protect the San Francisco Bay from Confederate threats. In 2010, the Nation Park Service undertook rehabilitation of several historic buildings dating back to the late nineteenth century. This paper examines a significant feature discovered during the refurbishment of the army hospital that was active from 1863 to 1903. Archaeological monitors discovered an ossuary pit...
Classifying Soapstone Cooking Pots in the Santa Barbara Channel Region (2016)
The Chumash manufactured cooking vessels using soapstone from Southern California quarries for thousands of years, especially between A.D. 1500 and 1804. These vessels have been recovered in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging fin form small cups to large ollas with small orifices that stand over two feet tall. Hundreds of Chumash soapstone cooking vessels were collected by early antiquarians in California and are curated in museums throughout North America with little information regarding...
Climate change risk assessment of coastal archaeological resources in San Diego County (2017)
Climate change poses threats to both inland and coastal archaeological resources alike. Sites along the coast of San Diego County are under various threats such as inundation and erosion due to sea level rise. For over two years, the Society for California Archaeology (SCA) and the San Diego County Archaeological Society (SDCAS) have been directing the Climate Change Project to assess the effects of climate change on San Diego County resources. This study utilizes GIS analysis to examine coastal...
Collaborative Pfforts to Preserve Los Angeles'History: Saving The Campo Santo (2015)
In October 2010, human remains were uncovered during the development of Los Angeles County land leased to the La Plaza De Cultura y Artes located in the heart of Los Angeles, California. The remains, which were within the well-known Camp Santo historic cemetery, were that of Los Pobladores, Native Americans, indigenous Mexicans, and the Gente de Razon, the very people who founded and built the Pueblo of Los Angeles during the early and mid 1800's. Over 90 individuals were removed, unbeknownst to...
Collection of crustaceans and echinoderms during the Middle Holocene on the West End of San Nicolas Island, California (2017)
We present the preliminary results of crustacean (crab) and echinoderm (sea urchin) remains from CA-SNI-40, a large Middle Holocene (~4440 – 3650 cal BP) dune site located on the West End of San Nicolas Island, California. Our study provides detailed identifications and quantitative analysis of crab and sea urchin remains that will contribute to previous faunal studies at this site, which identified over 88 shellfish taxa including dietary and non-dietary species. Preliminary results indicate...
Colonialism and Cuisine: Change and Continuity in Soapstone Consumption during the Contact Period in Alta, California (2017)
This paper investigates the processes of colonialism and identity politics in the Santa Barbara Channel region through the lens of consumption. The establishment of colonial institutions became entangled with pre-existing indigenous industries, thus creating change and continuity in a variety of practices. Here, I focus on soapstone vessels as they were utilized for cooking and storing foods before, during, and after the mission period. A drastic shift in the morphological characteristics of...
Commemoration in the Wake of Catastrophe: A Historical Archaeology Investigation of Southern California's St. Francis Dam Disaster and its Victims (2017)
The commemoration of disasters and their victims is a product of cultural, economic, political, and social forces in human society. Southern California's largely forgotten St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928 provides an excellent opportunity to study this complex process of commemoration, engaging memory within different frames of reference. Previous scholarship related to the disaster has been focused within the fields of civil engineering and geology, with the singular goal of determining the...
Communal Ritual, Communal Feasting, and the Creation of Community in Colonial-Era Los Angeles (2015)
This paper examines archaeological and ethnohistoric data that speak to the role of communal events and practices in the creation and maintenance of real and imagined communities during the colonial era for native people in the Los Angeles Basin. Communal ritual and associated feasting had a long tradition in this region, and persisted into the colonial era despite the incorporation of many native people into Mission San Gabriel and the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Archaeological data suggest such...
Community Formation and Integration in Colonial Alta California (2015)
Community formation and integration in colonial settings has traditionally been viewed from the binary perspective of colonists and native people. This session views the concept of community in colonial Alta California (1769-1834) from more holistic and alternative viewpoints. To set the stage for this discussion, this introductory paper offers an overview of the sociopolitical landscape in colonial Alta California and presents a broad discussion of the concept of "community" as it may pertain...
Constructive Monitoring: Finding Successful Solutions for Environmental, Engineering, Cultural Resources, and Public Relations Challenges in the Constructed Landscape of the Presidio of San Francisco, California (2015)
In 2012-2014, AMEC successfully balanced the needs of the National Park Service (NPS), the Presidio Trust, and regulators to preserve historic resources, maintain public relations, engineer safe and effective solutions, and address environmental concerns during remediation activities to remove contaminated soil at the Presidio of San Francisco, a NHLD and NRHP-listed property. For over 150 years, the Presidio, located near the Golden Gate Bridge, was used by the U.S. Army to protect San...
Consumption Patterns of a Pre-World War II-Era Japanese American Community on Terminal Island (2017)
Transmigration and diaspora are topics which archaeologists have recently begun contributing to in more detail (Lilley 2004, Ross 2010; Ross 2011). These concepts assert the fact that cultural interchange exists when immigrant or migrant communities settle in new lands, and rejects the idea of homogenization, accultraltion, or complete resistance and can be addressed in archaeology via consumption. Consumption patterns, though seemingly unimportatnt, have the ability to shed light on almost...
Contextual Implications: Excavating Open Air Sites Adjacent to Cache Cave (2015)
This paper outlines the cultural context of a complex of sites (known as the LCC sites) nearest to Cache Cave in South Central California. Results from LCC test excavations provide new information that help characterize cultural occupation of this Chumash and Yokuts borderland area in the San Emigdio Hills. The paper focuses on artifact assemblages from excavations near bedrock milling features associated with LCC sites. Artifacts recovered during excavation, such as lithics, fragmented faunal...