North America - California (Geographic Keyword)
276-300 (318 Records)
This study examines lithic debitage and artifacts on exotic raw materials from the Tule Creek Village (CA-SNI-25), a late Holocene site (3500 cal BP to the Mission Era) and one of the last occupied villages (500 BC – 1700 AD) on San Nicolas Island. In contrast to the shell bead trade off the island, little is known about what materials were brought to the island. Excavations yielded over 100 lithic artifacts from two significant components at CA-SNI-25 with the majority consisting of imported...
Sub pixel detection of archaeological materials using NASA satellite and aircraft data (2016)
For this NASA-funded project we examine the detectability of sub-pixel artifacts (i.e. site midden, obsidian artifacts, and pottery sherds) using airborne and spaceborne image data. We focus on research conducted to date at Glass Mountain Site in northern California. This large obsidian quarry area has been investigated winter 2014 and again during the height of vegetation growth 2014. Visible, SWIR, and TIR spectral characteristics of targets and background were measured in the field. A...
Sub-Pixel Detection of Obsidian at Glass Mountain Site Using NASA Satellite and Aircraft Data (2015)
We examine the detectability of sub-pixel artifacts (i.e. site midden, obsidian artifacts, and pottery sherds) using airborne and spaceborne image data. This poster focuses on research conducted to date at the Glass Mountain Site in northern California. This large obsidian quarry area has been investigated winter 2014 and again during the height of vegetation growth 2014. Visible, SWIR, and TIR spectral characteristics of targets and background were measured in the field. A spectral library...
Subjectification and the Archaeology of Violence: The 19th century Anti-Chinese Movement in San Jose, California (2015)
Communal violence is often central to subjectification and the process of creating and sustaining social difference. Preliminary results of archival studies and archaeological research trace the relationship between violence and subject formation among participants of the anti-Chinese movement in 19th century San Jose, which enacted campaigns of harassment and direct violence against Chinese immigrant and Chinese American residents of the city. What material practices and social performances...
A Tale of Two Management Plans: Comparing Visitor Impacts to Rock Art Sites on National Park Service Land vs. San Bernardino County Land (2017)
On July, 6 2016 it was announced that management of the Coyote Hole rock art site located near the village of Joshua Tree, California would be transferred from the San Bernardino County Flood Control District to the Native American Land Conservancy. The site’s proximity to Joshua Tree National Park (JOTR) provides a unique opportunity to compare this highly-accessible site with unregulated visitation to similarly threatened sites that are managed by JOTR. The publication of sensitive...
Talking Heads of a forgotten Civilization (2015)
Abstract: The site is a local shell mound, south of San Francisco and just east of Brisbane in the shadow of an Ohlone sacred place, San Bruno Mountain. The original site was destroyed in 1947 during the building of Highway 101. But a hundred yards east and underwater 365 days a year, there exist another shell mound, which is exposed a few times a year during extreme minus tides. From the surface of this site, ninety percent of the lithic assemblage is covered with a fine micro art form! In...
Technological and Functional Characteristics of Ceramics and Their Distribution along the Southern California Coast (2016)
Prehistoric ceramics found across southern California have a relatively discrete spatial distribution. While locally manufactured ceramics are common to the south and southeast of the Los Angeles River, prehistoric sherds are rare in deposits located to the northwest. This marked distribution is potentially explained by regional differences in surface ages and post-depositional processes. Alternatively, populations to the north may have had access to resources necessary for pottery alternatives,...
Territoriality among Coastal Villages on California’s Northern Channel Islands (2017)
The location of archaeological settlement sites is influenced not only by the distribution of ecological resources, but also cultural factors including conflict between neighboring populations. The ideal free distribution is a human behavioral ecology model that has been used to understand the establishment and persistence of settlement sites in the archaeological record. On California’s northern Channel Islands, the number and location of settlement sites expands over time until the Medieval...
Territoriality, Intertribal Boundaries, and Large Game Exploitation: Empirical Evaluation of a Spatial Bioeconomic Model of Conflict in the Western U.S. (2017)
Being a high-ranking prey item, large game are often desired for their economic and prestige values, both of which may be converted to an individual’s status. As such, big game can serve as a potential axis for competition between linguistic or ethnically distinct groups particularly under conditions of population stress leading to resource depression. This dynamic has been modeled using an evolutionary ecological approach that combines an amalgam of standard foraging models with the added cost...
Testing the Applicability of Non-destructive Methods and Databases for Determining Biological/Cultural Affiliation within NAGPRA (2015)
Determining biological/cultural affiliation of prehistoric human skeletal remains for NAGPRA compliance is standard protocol in museums and academic institutions. However, the biological affiliation of skeletons of unknown provenience is not always straightforward, especially when they preclude the use of destructive analytical methods (e.g., DNA extraction). Although software is available for the estimation of ancestry of human skulls in forensic cases, few comparative datasets are available...
They Build Ships There: Gold-Rush San Francisco’s Maritime Industries (2015)
The unprecedented growth of San Francisco during the California Gold-rush was fueled in part by the ingenuity and ambitions of entrepreneurs who recognized and exploited economic opportunities unrelated to the activities in the gold fields. This paper will discuss several maritime enterprises whose remains have been discovered and documented during archaeological investigations William Self Associates has conducted along and within the former confines of early San Francisco’s Yerba Buena...
They Sent Sandstone Across the Sea? A Preliminary Petrographic Study of Stone Bowls and Mortars (2015)
The Spanish chroniclers of the 18th century document extensive and intensive long distance regional trade networks among indigenous peoples throughout southern California (and beyond). Archaeologists are currently reevaluating these long held interpretations of Chumash regional exchange networks in the southern California region during the late prehistoric period. We report a pilot study focused the determination of the lithology/mineralogy of stone bowls/mortars collected from various sites in...
Tokens of Travel: Material Culture of Transoceanic Journeys in San Francisco (2015)
During the second half of the nineteenth century thousands of travelers embarked on voyages aboard steamships headed for San Francisco that could last weeks or months. In the past decade, William Self Associates has conducted multiple excavations within the vicinity of the original coastline of Yerba Buena Cove that have yielded an abundance of artifacts. This paper focuses on dinnerware pieces employed for meals aboard vessels of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company that were recovered from...
Tongva Ritual Practice on San Clemente Island: Reanalysis of Religious Dynamics during the Colonial Period (2016)
Many archaeologists have studied religious identity in Native American populations. Tongva sites such as Lemon Tank and Big Dog Cave on the plateau of San Clemente Island provide a rich source of data on Tongva ritual practices. Collections from these sites include ritual avian and canid burials along with caches of seeds, beads, and ritually "killed" objects. Existing research has focused on connecting the archaeological record to the historical and ethnographic record to identify the rituals...
Toolstone Sources off the Pacific Coast of Alta California: Implications for Evaluating the Marginality of Islands through Space and Time (2015)
Except for major sources of chalcedonic chert on eastern Santa Cruz and soapstone on Santa Catalina, the islands off the Pacific Coast of Alta California were long thought to be impoverished in high-quality materials for making stone tools. As a result, cherts and other toolstones could have been a major source of trade between islanders and mainlanders. We summarize the distribution of known lithic resources on the islands, documenting numerous chert types on the Northern Channel Islands and...
Tracking Translocations: Interdisciplinary approaches to animal translocations on the California Channel Islands (2015)
One of the greatest human impacts on the environment has been the intentional and unintentional introduction of plants and animals around the world. Islands are particularly susceptible to ecological change following introductions, but distinguishing between natural and cultural introductions of wild taxa is often challenging. Here we present our interdisciplinary approach to investigating the origins of California Channel Island terrestrial mammals that can serve as a framework for helping...
Trade Routes and Contradictory Spheres of Influence: Movement of Rhyolite through the heart of the western Mojave Desert (2015)
Provenance analysis of obsidian and rhyolite artifacts from four Late Prehistoric sites located on the edges of the western Mojave Desert suggest direct procurement practices and the presence of a trade network through the Antelope Valley. Less clear is whether evidence for the movement of materials can effectively be used to infer particular cultural territories or specific cultural interactions. Ethnographic work in the Antelope Valley suggests that areas surrounding rhyolitic formations may...
Traditional Resource Management in the Sierra Nevada of California (2016)
There is general agreement that past Native American populations significantly modified Sierra Nevada landscapes in California leading to a variety of beneficial resource outcomes. Further, many argue that through their lengthy history in the region, Native peoples initiated cascading regional effects on forest composition and structure in the Sierra Nevada. With this in mind, agencies and researchers are turning to the past to develop more effective resource management protocols. Concordantly,...
Transnational linkages: the archaeology of the late 19th and early 20th century Chinese railroad workers (2017)
Archaeological studies of Chinese railroad sites in the American West tend to be site-specific and rarely position material assemblages in a global or diasporic context where both people and goods moved back and forth across the Pacific Ocean. This paper examines how transnational frameworks can help archaeologists better interpret the material culture found at Chinese railroad sites by drawing on the fields of Asian American studies and historical archaeology.
Tribal Collaboration in Heritage Management on the Carrizo Plain National Monument (2017)
The Carrizo Plain National Monument (CPNM) contains some of the most significant Native American heritage sites in the United States. In recognition of this, a cultural landscape, which includes habitation sites, camps, quarries and pictograph sites, has been designated as the Carrizo Plain Archaeological District National Historic Landmark. In addition to these physical features, the Carrizo Plain is imbued with intangible values that embody a sacred landscape for affiliated tribes. The Bureau...
Trophic Cascades, Kelp Forest Dysfunction, and the Genesis of Commercial Abalone (Haliotis spp.) Fishing in California (2017)
For over 12,000 years, hunter-gatherers of coastal California harvested abalone as an important subsistence and raw material resource. Archaeological evidence from the Northern Channel Islands suggests that human-induced reductions of local sea otter populations may have triggered a trophic cascade beginning 8000 years ago and released abalone and other shellfish from predation pressure, helping to sustain intensive human harvest for millennia. With the arrival of the Spanish in AD 1542 and the...
Tule Balsa Boats and the San Francisco Bay Economy. (2015)
Early historic accounts describe the use of tule balsa boats throughout the San Francisco Bay region. The advantages attendant to this technology, ranging from increased access to estuarine food resources and the transportation of materials and people over a large geographic area is as monumental as the many mounded sites that once surrounded the Bay Shoreline. This presentation will review descriptions of these boats and propose a possible connection between maritime travel, mounded sites and...
Turning "Crisis" into Opportunity: Rediscovering and Reconnecting with a Colonial Era California Collection (2015)
In the late 19th century museum collectors recovered an abundance of cultural materials from the Channel Islands and dispersed them to national museums. Although they recorded important ethnological observations, their practices were often not in the best interests of native peoples or even academics. Many of the artifacts were stored without provenience information and in many ways disregarded. However, the unique preservation of legacy collections provides an excellent opportunity to...
Uncovering New Opportunities: Community Colleges and Archaeological Lab Experience (2015)
There is a perception that community colleges offer few practical opportunities to students interested in archaeology. Through an agreement with California State Parks and the support of our college, we established the Cosumnes River Archaeological Working Lab (CRAWL) to provide community college students hands-on training with artifacts. This paper discusses the project and findings, logistics of starting a community college lab, and benefits of exposing novice students to archaeological lab...
Understanding Island Tongva Villages: Results From the Catalina Island Museum's Toyon Collection (2015)
The Catalina Island Museum (CIM) cares for the largest collection of Island Tongva (Gabrielino) artifacts in the world, the results of early expeditions, modern excavations as well as objects donated by Catalina Islanders. Opened in 1953, the Catalina Island Museum boasts a wealth of historic, archaeological, and archival materials that document life from the first islanders 8000 years ago to the present day, and strives to provide awareness and appreciation of the island’s rich heritage...