North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
251-275 (318 Records)
As the smallest of California’s Channel Islands, isolated and impoverished Santa Barbara Island has received less scholarly attention than its well-known neighbors. Initially described as a "way station" to the other islands, subsequent archaeological expeditions have reinforced the interpretation that the island was only temporarily occupied in the Middle and Late Holocene. In 2012, an effort to rerecord the 19 known sites was undertaken. Subsequent surveys have increased the number of sites to...
Scraping Our Way To The Past:A Methodological Approach for Chinese Rural Work Camps (2015)
Recovering meaningful information from ephemeral, short-term work camps in the west is challenging, given the brief occupation time, absence of shelters other than tents or portable structures, and informal layout and design. One methodological approach that has proved effective for research at camps with shallow or no subsurface deposits focuses on exposing and investigating the horizontal deposits across the sites. Archaeological studies of Chinese occupied camps related to mining, railroad...
Searching for Evidence of Early Human Occupation of the New World with Aerial and Satellite Imagery (2015)
The pluvial lakes in the Mojave Desert, Which are today simply expanses of sand in nine years out of ten, were once large bodies of water, many of them linked together by streams and large rivers. Several were fed by the Mojave River, which introduced aquatic life. Fresh water clams were common along the beaches on lakes fed by the Mojave River, which were also places frequented by human groups that were attracted to the resources to be found there, among which were now extinct mega-fauna. Both...
Seismic Mitigation for Collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum through mountmaking (2017)
As recent earthquakes in Oklahoma and Virginia have shown, even regions generally thought to be far from seismic zones are never truly immune to their effects. The development over the last thirty years of seismic mount systems that safely capture objects in 360 degrees, can offer solutions relevant to collections in a diversity of environments. Focus on this goal for the past few decades has led to a realization that more can be done to protect collections in advance of threats, leading to...
Serrated scapular tools from Cache Cave (2015)
Due to taphonomic processes at most open sites, bone tools are underrepresented in relation to stone tools. Tools made from modified artiodactyl scapulae are best known from protected sites (caves and rockshelters) in the Great Basin, such as Humboldt Cave and Lovelock Cave. These scapular tools vary in form and presumably function. Some are pointed and described as awls, but a second type is a serrated form, which we will discuss here. Many serrated forms are described as scapular saws, suited...
Settlement Patterning and the Ideal Free Distribution in the Ethnographic and Prehistoric Sierra Nevada of California (2017)
The ideal free distribution, which predicts that individuals will assort themselves across habitats of varying quality such that all individuals receive equal fitness benefits, can be an important model in the analysis of human settlement patterning. Despite its simplicity, the ideal free distribution can be difficult to apply to archaeological problems because, in addition to often requiring estimates of population size, the model necessitates a definition of habitat "suitability" in the...
Settlement Patterns in Southeastern Sacramento County (2015)
Twenty years of cultural resource management efforts have culminated in over four thousand acres of inventoried land in southeastern Sacramento County. With nearly one hundred recorded lithic scatters, middens, bedrock mortars, rock art, and rock shelter sites this data offers the chance to better understand prehistoric settlement patterns along the Cosumnes River and Deer Creek drainages. The data, normally contained in fragmented surveys and limited testing, is an initial look at the...
Shellfish and Nutrition in San Francisco Bay: Clues from Seasonality Studies (2015)
Shells are especially visible in the archaeological record of Central California. They comprise much of the midden in the large shellmounds that once lined San Francisco Bay. However, shells are also present in many inland sites, though they were collected from the Bay and hauled many kilometers inland. Seasonality reconstructions using oxygen stable isotopes show that shells on the Bay were typically harvested in two seasons, winter and summer, but inland sites contain shells from just winter....
Shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay as Sacred Landscapes (2015)
Prior to the time of European contact ancestral Ohlone tribal groups of the San Francisco Bay region buried their dead within many "shellmound" sites located near the bayshore. Archaeological inquiry over the past century has revealed that many of these burials had rich grave associations. Even so, the prevailing assumptions held by the scientific community has been that these bayshore mounds were the result from the refuse of habitation/village activities focused around the exploitation of...
Small, But Not Insignificant: Human Subsistence, Ecology, and Land Use on Anacapa Island, California (2015)
Anacapa Island (2.9 km2) is the second smallest of California’s Channel Islands and has limited freshwater and terrestrial biodiversity. Called ‘Anayapax, a word meaning deception or mirage, by the Chumash, archaeologists have long speculated that the island was occupied seasonally or as a stopover by people based on the mainland or other islands. Here, we focus on our recent archaeological research at CA-ANI-2 and other Anacapa sites. Occupied between about 3130 and 2750 cal BP, CA-ANI-2...
Social and Economic Implications for Identifying Basketry Production in the Californian Archaeological Record: A Case Study from the Interior Chumash Region (2016)
Poor preservation of fiber technologies in the archaeological record has caused the importance of basketry in pre-Colonial California society to be often overlooked. Subsequently, studies of the social and economic elements of basketry manufacture, primarily done by women in pre-Colonial California communities, have been impacted. Despite preservation issues, the archaeological record can be used to study the socioeconomic contexts of this engendered craft production by identifying the tools...
Social Boundaries and The Cultural Ecology of Artiodactyl Hunting in Prehistoric Central California (2017)
We use a model developed using Geographical Information Systems software to examine the extent to which the suitability of habitat surrounding archaeological sites in Central California affected hunting decisions for three artiodactyl taxa: elk (Cervus elaphus), deer (Odocoileus hemionus), and pronghorn (Antilocapra americana). Model findings are compared to a database of 100 archaeofaunal assemblages from the same area. We find that the model predicts the presence and relative abundance of elk...
Social-Ecological Resilience on California’s Northern Channel Islands: The Trans-Holocene Record from Paleocoastal Mariners to Complex Hunter-Gatherers (2016)
For more than 12,000 years, the Chumash and their ancestors thrived in a maritime hunting and gathering existence on California’s Northern Channel Islands. Despite a dearth of terrestrial game, growing populations, and major changes in climate and geography, the resilience of these maritime hunter-gatherers across the Holocene is remarkable, with only limited evidence for long-term human impacts, extinctions, or abandonment until the arrival of Europeans. Trans-Holocene archaeological sequences...
Spatial Signatures of Ceremony and Social Interaction: GIS Exploratory Analysis and Spatial Modeling at Tule Creek Village (CA-SNI-25), San Nicolas Island, California (2017)
The spatial patterning of artifacts and features excavated from the Tule Creek site (CA-SNI-25), San Nicolas Island, provides an opportunity to analyze the intra-site correlations between artifact types, materials, and features. Excavations at East Locus at CA-SNI-25 have yielded evidence of trade with other islands as well as evidence suggesting complex ceremonial activity, such as dog and bird burials, large hearths, stacked stone features, and multiple discrete pits. Here we use GIS...
Spatial, Technological, and Functional Characteristics of Ceramics along the Southern California Coast (2017)
Prehistoric ceramics found across southern California have a discrete spatial distribution. While locally manufactured ceramics are common to the south and southeast of the Los Angeles River, prehistoric ceramic sherds are rare in deposits located to the northwest. This marked distribution is potentially explained through a few hypotheses. Populations to the north may have had access to resources necessary for pottery alternatives or may have differed in their settlement patterns, mobility,...
Splitting and Lumping: Decision-making and Meaning in Intentional Artifact Fragmentation and Deposition (2017)
Drawing on archaeological data from the greater Los Angeles Basin, this paper examines sequences of intentional ground-stone artifact fragmentation and singular or multiple-recombined fragment placement within various feature contexts. Recent studies of putative communal mourning features have indicated an initial suite of intentional artifact fragmentation and treatment practices including pigmentation or burning, but ongoing study of these and other types of features has revealed additional...
Stable Isotope Evidence of Seasonal Shellfish Harvesting and Consumption in Prehistoric Central California (2017)
Shellfish played an important role in the diet of prehistoric hunter-gatherers of Central California. They were the dominant visible component in the large shellmounds that once lined the San Francisco Bay shoreline. Although Bay shellfish are present at inland sites as well, little is known about the role of shellfish in the diet and lifeways of interior populations that hauled the resource in from the Bay. This study focuses on findings from CA-SCL-330, an inland Late Period site in the Diablo...
Stable Isotope Perspectives on Diet and Mobility in the California Delta (2015)
Isotopic variation in individuals allows us to track differences in diet, mobility, and migration between various demographic categories including age, status, and sex. We use stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to analyze diet and oxygen to examine human mobility from a range of sites in Yolo and Solano counties, with a focus on how marine vs. freshwater aquatic resources were exploited. Stable isotope results are compared to faunal remains from the same sites to establish baseline data for...
Stable Isotope Perspectives on Intra-Community Sharing (2017)
Stable isotope analyses of human skeletal tissues provide estimates of paleodiet at the scale of the individual. This paper explores intra- and inter-community variation in stable nitrogen, carbon, and sulfur isotopes in human bone and teeth as insight into the prevalence of food sharing in several ancient hunter-gatherer burial populations in California. The goal, in particular, is to trace intra-community variation over time to examine how cooperative foraging and food-sharing strategies...
Stable Isotope Sourcing of Olivella Shell Beads from Central California (2015)
Although a temporally diagnostic type artifact, the pre-contact cultural role of Olivella beads is poorly understood for Central California and the San Francisco Bay Area. While important as an item of trade and burial wealth, the nature of Olivella bead origin and conveyance is uncertain. Stable isotope sourcing, using oxygen and carbon from serial sampling shell carbonate, provides a potential to locate where shell was collected for bead production. We document developments in a technique for...
Starch Grain Analysis of Bedrock Mortars in California: Implications to Our Understanding of California Prehistory (2017)
Starch grain analysis is a growing field in California archaeology, with the potential to significantly add to our understanding of prehistoric peoples. Using a non-destructive extraction method for field sampling bedrock mortars, I was able to extract microscopic plant residues from the mortar surface for analysis. The subsequent identifications were made using my ethnographically-informed comparative collection of modern native plants. The results of this research indicate that the function of...
Stewards of the Land: Agua Caliente Tribal Historic Preservation (2016)
As stewards of the Tribe’s heritage, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians has designated the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO) responsible for the protection, preservation, and management of a wide array of Historic Properties and Cultural Resources such as archaeological sites, historic-period properties, as well as expanses of land which are of traditional or ceremonial importance to Tribal membership. In order to best protect the Tribe’s cultural heritage the THPO has...
Stone Geometrics: An Inclusive Typology Matrix for Californian and Chilean Cogged Stones (2015)
Drawing on recent studies of cogged stones by Scientific Resource Surveys, Inc., comparisons can be made between the artifacts found along coastal Southern California and morphologically similar artifacts unearthed in the Coquimbo region of Chile. This poster will describe a new method of calibrating typological shapes for describing both Californian and Chilean cogged stone artifacts. Several caches containing unconventionally shaped cogged stones were discovered by SRSinc during archaeological...
Stories Past and Present: Archaeology, lore, and community at von Pfister’s General Store, Benicia, California (2016)
The story of the start of the California Gold Rush by the announcement of the discovery at von Pfister’s General Store in Benicia, California, lives large in the contemporary community’s collective memory. Archaeological excavations and historical research at von Pfister’s has shed light on daily life at the general store and has served to historically and socially contextualize the popular story. This paper explores the origins of the story and the ways the narrative has shaped a larger...
A Study of Lithic Debitage from Talepop (CA-LAN-229) at Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, California (2017)
CA-LAN-229 is a prehistoric archaeological site and an ethnohistoric Chumash village, Talepop, in the interior Santa Monica Mountains in southern California with evidence of human occupation stretching nearly 9000 years. There are both chronometric and ethnographic lines of evidence which indicate a punctuated occupation from 5000 BC up until the 1800s. The longevity of the occupation of the site provides a rare opportunity to study and test chronologies. The site is also distinctive because of...