North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (318 Records)
Archaeological collections from San Francisco’s South-of-Market area speak to the lives of 19th century Jews. We take the position that archaeology can help us understand the effects of the haskalah (the Jewish "enlightenment") on European immigrants’ efforts to divest themselves of their sociological ambivalence. In this way, archaeology can help illuminate one of the most enduring and controversial issues in contemporary Jewish studies: the relationship between identity and religious...
Archaeology of the Gold Rush Waterfront (2015)
Archaeological research conducted in the former, now land-filled Gold Rush waterfront of San Francisco has defined a rapidly developed port infrastructure and substantial remains of discarded material culture that comprises a several block wide and deep macro-site. Buried ships, collapsed buildings, pilings from wharves and piers, and discarded cargoes buried by urban expansion and the filling of the are have emerged periodically due to redevelopment since 1907 and discoveries continue well...
Artiodactyl Exploitation in Northeastern California during the Terminal Prehistoric/Protohistoric Time Periods: Evidence of Environmental Rebound? (2017)
Artiodactyl representation in the archaeological record can be a particularly sensitive indicator of past human-environmental interactions due to their status as a high-ranking prey item. In this study we explore terminal prehistoric and protohistoric patterning of artiodactyl exploitation in the archaeofaunal record in Northeastern California. Specifically, this study examines previously published zooarchaeological data derived from residential sites situated along the Pit River in conjunction...
As the ancestors were laid to rest: preliminary results from the archaeobotanical analysis of burial soils from the Yukisma Site (CA-SCL-38) (2016)
This paper will be presenting the preliminary results of analyses of archaeological soils collected from within burial contexts at the Yukisma Site between 1993 and 1994. The Yukisma Site is a mounded cemetery site located in what is now Milpitas California, and was used as a burial ground from AD 540-1687. This cemetery was disturbed by construction in 1993. Over 243 individuals were recovered, and later reburied by the Muwekma Ohlone Indian Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area. While the...
Assessing Archaeological Sensitivity in San Francisco (2015)
The San Francisco Planning Department archaeological staff reviews hundreds of projects for archaeological sensitivity each year as part of the California Environmental Quality Act review process. To aid this review, the Department has begun a long-term GIS project creating thematic maps and related datasets to inform archeological site identification, to determine interrelationships between archeological sites and historical land uses, and to direct research designs. Over the last 8 years the...
Assessing the Use of Lithic Artifacts in the Manufacture of Fiber Technolgies at Cach Cave (2015)
Cache Cave exhibits one of the most significant in situ assemblages of basketry and cordage recorded within the Chumash culture area. The abundance and quality of the unique items preserved in this cave system attest that caching served as one important aspect of site function. The presence of utilitarian lithic artifacts, identified during excavations at the cave in 2012 and 2014, suggest that this site may have served additional functions throughout the duration of its use. The...
The Assumption of Insular Marginality: The Curious Case of Isla Cedros, Baja California (2015)
What about islands inspires us to think of them as places on ‘the edge?’ The idea of an island is often more remote than the reality. The word itself conjures up notions of loneliness and isolation. Some islands are inextricably linked, to other islands and/or the adjacent mainland, while the nonpareil isolation of Rapa Nui is legendary. Lying off the Pacific Coast of Baja California, Isla Cedros presents a strange combination of these factors. The island supported a large resident...
At the Continent’s Edge: A View of Flaked-Stone Crescents from Sonoma County, California (2015)
One of the most unique, enigmatic, and intriguing artifacts of the Western United states is the flaked-stone crescent. Crescents are tools that have been bifacially reduced into a crescent shape, although in some, referred to as "eccentrics," this form is extensively modified with multiple notches or extensions to their inner and outer margins. These lithics capture the imagination of both professionals and the public, reflected in the 1991 designation of a "bear-shaped" eccentric crescent as...
Auditory Exostosis: A Marker of Occupational Stress in Pre-Contact Populations from the San Francisco Bay Region of California (2015)
The formation of auditory exostosis in prehistoric populations living along the shoreline of San Francisco Bay is due to participation in cold water subsistence behavior. Rates of auditory exostosis in populations from previously excavated archaeological sites located along the Bay Shore were compared with those located in the interior East Bay. A sample population of 1,291 individuals dating from the Early Period (3500 – 200 B.C.) to the Late Period (A.D. 1050 – 1769) was employed to address...
Backed Knives and Subsistence Strategies at the Hurdy Gurdy Bridge Site (2015)
Excavations conducted near the ancestral Tolowa village of Naa-k’vt-‘at on the South Fork of the Smith River produced unexpected results in terms of the apparent absence of tools, such as harpoon tips and fishing weights, related to salmon fishing. Rather, an unusual lithic tool was identified, described as a "backed" knife produced from splitting a biface or uniface longitudinally to facilitate hand-held use. This paper will explore the possible function(s) of this tool in ancestral Tolowa...
Beads all the way down: reassessing the economics of Shell Bead Production on Santa Cruz Island (2017)
Marine shell beads played an important role within broad interregional exchange networks in California for several millenia. Previous scholarship has demonstrated the relationship of shell bead production and exchange to increasing socio-political complexity in the Santa Barbara Channel region during the Late Period, ca. 900 B.P. However, this relationship is less understood for earlier periods. Additionally, the morphologically-distinct bead types produced during the Late and preceding Middle...
Bedrock Mortars as an Indicator of Territorial Behavior in Late Holocene California (2017)
Bedrock mortars were an integral part of intensive acorn economies in Native California and are a prominent feature of the Late Holocene archaeological record. Construction of these milling features also indicates a strong investment in particular locations on the landscape. Ethnographic evidence suggests the importance of local acorn crops led to ownership and defense of property and resource rights in many areas. Human Behavioral Ecology offers a framework for examining the conditions that may...
Before San Francisco: The Archaeology of El Polin Spring in the Presidio of San Francisco (2015)
Archaeological research at El Polín Spring in the Presidio of San Francisco illuminates the early history of the city before San Francisco and Yerba Buena. Initial historic research and archaeological excavation at El Polín revealed what was interpreted to be the home and associated refuse midden of two intermarried colonial families. This is the first known Spanish-colonial occupation outside the walls of El Presidio de San Francisco, dating to sometime after 1812. More recent excavation at the...
Best Practices and Community Engagement for Reinternment of CA-LAn-270 (Los Altos Village) Cultural Materials on a National Registry Listed Site (2015)
Within the core of NAGPRA is a spirit of collaboration and consultation between institutions, investigators and native communities. At CSULB, we have partnered with Tongva/San Gabrielino community members and university administration to reinter cultural remains from CA-LAn-270 (Los Altos Village Site), a site excavated in the 1950s. Community interests have centered on placing the re-interment place on university campus property and at a location of CA-LAn-234, a National Register listed...
Beyond Boundaries: A Discussion of "out-of'place" Yokuts and Chumash Motifs (2015)
Rock art research by Grant (1965) and Heizer and Clewlow (1973) revealed the prolific number of painted images that Chumash and Yokuts cultures produced in South Central California. Previous research (ibid; Lee 1991; Grant 1979) often focused on defining distinctive stylistic components and elements that characterize and differentiate these respective traditions, and define their cultural boundaries. Borderland rock art sites such as Carneros Rocks and Painted Rock have become continued points...
Beyond Missions: Documenting Mexican and Mexican-American Adobes in California (2016)
In the foreword to their 1931 review of nineteenth-century adobe houses in California, historical architects Donald Hannaford and Revel Edwards express despair at the state of such research in their time, noting that "printed material on the subject" could only be generated via discovery in the field. Eighty-five years later, research is still lacking. California’s famed colonial missions tend to draw the bulk of archaeological attention while research associated with Mexican- and Gold Rush-era...
Beyond the Mission Walls: Faunal analysis of an Alta California mission ranchería feature (2015)
Mission Santa Clara de Asís, located in south San Francisco Bay, was one in a chain of Spanish Franciscan missions stretching from the south to the north of Alta California. Founded in 1777, Mission Santa Clara has been the subject of archaeological investigation for decades, but only in the past few years has the lens of research focused on native people’s experiences and navigation of the mission system.This paper presents the results of a zooarchaeological analysis of a sampled pit feature...
Big Picture History in North America: Integrating Narratives of Our Continent’s Past (2017)
No society exists in isolation. In order to understand the history of North America it is therefore critical to see the continent as a landscape of mutually known and interacting places and peoples. One of the goals of this panel is to bring together specialists from different corners of the continent to share narratives of regional interaction in their areas. This paper will introduce the thematic and theoretical groundings for the session, suggesting that both systemic and historical models...
Big reasons to eat small fishes: Nutritional composition and subsistence decisions along California’s Central Coast (2015)
While behavioral ecology approaches to human subsistence in archaeology often focus on calories, nutritional content is another aspect that can influence a resource’s desirability. In particular, fats are an important dietary source of easily digestible calories for hunter-gatherers. Proximate composition (fat, protein, moisture, and ash) is presented here for several fish species commonly found in archaeological sites along the central California coast, and combined with data drawn from the...
Bit by bit: Olivella bead production during the Middle Period on Santa Cruz Island (2016)
Beads made from the Olivella biplicata shell were used as both decoration and a form of currency by the Chumash living in the Santa Barbara Channel region, and large quantities have been recovered from many prehistoric sites throughout Western North America. Many of the bead types were made from different portions of the shell and conform to standardized shapes and sizes. A number of these types have distinctive spatial and temporal distributions in the archaeological record, and based on...
Blunt Impact: The Role of War Clubs in Prehistoric Californian Warfare (2016)
Conflict archaeology has recently begun to focus on the effect of warfare on hunter-gatherers. A key issue in Southern California revolves around the effectiveness of indigenous weaponry. Numerous accounts describe club-like weapons as well as bows and arrows. Little archaeological evidence, however, is available on the role and impact of these weapons on conflict. This paper reports on experiments designed to document trauma inflicted by weapons replicated from archaeological and museum...
Borderlands, Continuances and Violence: A Social Nexus at Black Star Canyon, San Juan Capistrano California (2015)
Post European contact the historicity of the Santa Ana Mountain landscape of Orange County, California has been popularly constructed around the narratives of bucolic mission and ranch life, and that of the "wild frontier". The interplay between both histories has contributed to a memorialization of the Santa Ana Mountains as a borderland space during the Spanish, Mexican and American colonial eras that deemphasizes indigenous social life. This paper seeks to complicate the historical concept of...
Boulders, outcrops, caves: a proposed method for documentation of cultural landscape features demonstrated in San Diego County, California (2015)
Ubiquitous cultural features such as mortars, basins and slicks on rock outcrops, boulders, and cave floors attest to the long history of human use of landscape features. Although widely noted, methods for systematic investigation of such features lag behind well-developed study protocols for other archaeological material categories. Answers to questions such as how cultural landscape features were manufactured, how they were used, and how they were incorporated into the spatial organization of...
A Burial in the Bay: Evidence for Environment and Diet 7500 Years Ago (2015)
Microscopic and macroscopic evaluation of samples associated with a 7570 CAL BP burial recovered on the west side of San Francisco Bay provides multiple proxy records representing the environment at the time this person was interred and possibly foods consumed by this individual. The pollen and macrofloral records indicate evidence of coastal or littoral plants, one of which, soaproot, also contributed abundantly to the macrofloral record. A wide variety of trees grew in the bay area, as did...
Cache Cave in Context: 3D Scanning Complex Cave Environments for Mapping and In-Situ Documentation of Artifacts (2015)
The spatial documentation at Cache Cave entailed the mapping of the cave’s interconnecting passages and shelters, its taphonomic environment, and the archaeology present at the site. Due to its complex formation and small spaces, the overall cave structure could not be recorded by more traditional mapping methods. Through the use of three-dimensional (3D) scanning during the Spring and Summer of 2014, a multi-scalar, high resolution approach was used to capture both the interior structure and...