North America: California and Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Theresa Barket. Andrew Garrison. Claudia Camacho-Trejo. David Sosa.

CA-MRP-283, the Hackney Site, is a late prehistoric/protohistoric site in Mariposa County, California. Excavated by California State University, Los Angeles in 1972, the flaked-stone assemblage includes debitage, projectile points, and flake tools. A reanalysis of the debitage shows that late stage biface production, expedient flake-tool production, and the production, repair, and replacement of projectile points were all common activities at the Hackney site. A recent analysis of the projectile...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Whitley.

This is an abstract from the "The Art and Archaeology of the West: Papers in Honor of Lawrence L. Loendorf" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Larry Loendorf has always emphasized that rock art research is nothing if it is not also archaeology. Much of his research has accordingly considered the importance of the (dirt) archaeological context of rock art sites, and what this can tell us about the art. In the spirit of this concern, the archaeological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Melinda Leach.

Prehistoric rock art increasingly is understood to be embedded in complex cultural systems of social routines, kin networks, economic landscapes, technological change, seasonal population movements, domestic and task-specific foraging behaviors, and variable gendered activities. The Holocene record of occupation and use of the High Rock Country in the Northern Great Basin provides an opportunity to explore such complex contexts of rock art. Rich lithic sources, strategic locations for hunting,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Diane Gifford-Gonzalez.

This is an abstract from the "Current Insights into Pyrodiversity and Seascape Management on the Central California Coast" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ascertaining the past existence of fire-based landscape management practices requires the use of multiple lines of geological, arboreal fire scar, pollen and charcoal, archaeobotanical, and faunal evidence. In our initial project in a now-woody valley near the Central California coast, these and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Gorden.

Yokuts and Western Mono tribes of central California had close cultural ties. While the Yokuts were the most numerous and the dominant culture, many people were bilingual. They shared themes in their pictographs, petroglyphs, and cupules, which are cultural traits of a ceremonial nature that are archaeologically identifiable, and are generally agreed to have magico-religious significance. Forty-one percent of the paintings in their territory occur in shallow caves and rockshelters, which vary in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Zeanah.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeology on the Edge(s): Transitions, Boundaries, Changes, and Causes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Great Basin hunter-gatherers procured obsidian from more distant sources during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (PHT) than did their Holocene successors, suggesting a more mobile subsistence adaptation. However, this requires annual rounds and logistic forays beyond the scale of ethnographic, pedestrian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anthony Morales.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2017, California State University, Los Angeles, began a multi-year investigation of the Rose Valley Site (CA-INY-1799). As an enhancement of our archaeological methodology, my study has emphasized an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates geological research and geospatial technologies. This includes the use of geostatistical analyses, extensive...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philip Kaijankoski. Brian Byrd. Michelle Goman. Jack Meyer. Manuel Palacios-Fest.

Situated on the southeast edge of San Francisco, the Islais Creek estuary was infilled during early development of the city. Recent geoarchaeological coring searching for prehistoric sites underlying this urban landscape has documented a complex sequence of Holocene landforms deposited as sea level rise transformed the ancestral Islais Creek valley. This exploratory work also identified, in a variety of stratigraphic contexts, an extensive ancestral Native American shell mound that was occupied...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christina Livingston. Matthew Des Lauriers. Claudia Garcia-Des Lauriers.

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Baja California is a landscape formed by visually endless coastlines fringing a narrow spine of mountains and deep desert canyons with their hidden oases. The earliest European images presented of this original “California” depicted it as an island, separate from the adjacent continent....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Glassow.

Data derived from oxygen isotope profiles of mussel shells suggest that sites in the interior of Santa Cruz Island dating between 4700 and 3400 cal BC, the period of the island’s "red abalone middens," were occupied during the spring through early winter, with little or no occupation during the main winter months. In contrast, a small number of oxygen isotope profiles indicates that a large costal site was occupied predominantly during the winter and possibly also the fall, with no occupation...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lynn Gamble.

This is an abstract from the "Kin, Clan, and House: Social Relatedness in the Archaeology of North American Societies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Secret societies are groups of individuals that possess esoteric knowledge that is not available to non-members, and therefore are by definition exclusive. Many such societies are associated with administering ritual ceremonies. The Chumash Indians of southern California had a secret society known as...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marissa Molinar.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation examines traditional, contemporary, and experimental methods of illustration and photography in rock art recording. Addressed accordingly are the processes and problems unique to pictographs (painted) and petroglyphs (pecked) parietal imagery, superimposition and dating. As a rock art researcher, photographer, and artist, many examples will...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Robinson. Eleni Kotoula. Clare Bedford. Devlin Gandy. Matthew Baker.

The over-painting sequences at the elaborate rock-art site of Pleito, South-Central California, is one of most complex in the Americas. In a region famous for its polychromatic traditions, including Chumash, Yokuts, Kitanemuk, and other Californian native groups, Pleito stands out as the richest in terms of variety of colours, iconography, and over-painting. This over-painting, or superimposition, offers the 'deepest' data rich relative sequence in the region. Integrated work employing...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Robert Nash.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological investigations at four Fremont sites in the Sevier Desert indicate settlement-subsistence strategies changed after AD 1000, shifting from short-term processing camps associated with logistical exploitation of resources to residential occupation and intensive processing of rabbits. These changes may have resulted from population growth and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Buonasera. Jelmer Eerkens. Brian Byrd. Monica Arellano. Glendon Parker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Síi Túupentak (CA-SCA-565/H) is a late precontact ancestral Ohlone village/cemetery site in central California (ca. 540–145 cal BP). Integration of proteomic, genomic, and osteological analyses provided highly confident biological sex estimates for remains of most individuals at this site (65 of 76) spanning all age groups—from perinatal infants to aged...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Johnson.

This is an abstract from the "Supernatural Gamekeepers and Animal Masters: A Cross-Cultural Perspective" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Native peoples along the Pacific Coast of North America exploited stranded whales that washed ashore, providing abundant meat and oil for consumption. Many rock art sites along the coast between Alaska and Acapulco contain images of whales and other cetaceans, and portable effigies also depict these marine...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Locke Barton.

While monitoring lead remediation activities around historic buildings at Point San Jose (now Fort Mason) in 2010, National Park Service archaeologists discovered thousands of human bones in a medical waste pit behind the former hospital. Large numbers of medical artifacts, primarily medicinal bottle shards, were also recovered from the pit. Many of these medicinal bottles were produced by the U.S. Army Hospital Department for a limited time during the Civil War (1862-1865). Such precise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Bishop. Katherine Jorgensen.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Contact period studies tend to focus on the interactions between indigenous peoples and non-native peoples and the commerce produced from said interactions. As such, a plethora of information can be gleaned from the study of tools and materials procured during this time period with a focus on changes in tool form or material choice, if any. As a result of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugh Radde. Weston McCool.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we utilize rocky intertidal data from long-term marine biology surveys coupled with targeted archaeological sites on the California Channel Islands to explain the timing of intensified fishing strategies. The Ideal Free Distribution Model (IFD) offers a framework to test predictions relating to human decision making in varying ecological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Thomas.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The prayerstone hypothesis, grounded in Southern Paiute oral history, holds that selected incised stone artifacts were votive offerings deliberately emplaced where spiritual power (puha) was known to reside, accompanying prayers for personal power and expressing thanks for prayers answered. Proposing significant and long-term linkages between Great Basin...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sandra Hollimon.

This is an abstract from the "Silenced Rituals in Indigenous North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chumash undertakers were third gender persons and postmenopausal women. The Spanish Mission system significantly disrupted traditional practices, especially through sexual violence as a silencing tool. I examine the impacts of the Spanish colonial effort on Chumash mortuary rituals, with regard to the concept of gendercide.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Vance. Danielle Waite.

This is an abstract from the "Digging Deeper: Pushing Ourselves to Engage the Public in Our Shared Heritage through Outreach and Education" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. ncouraging the public to invest in resource conservation, education, and exploration is an ongoing priority for the Nevada BLM, Black Rock Field Office. Black Rock Rendezvous (BRR), an annual event hosted on the Black Rock Playa, is one such effort. The event introduces a wide...

DOCUMENT Citation Only David Rhode.

This is an abstract from the "Pushing the Envelope, Chasing Stone Age Sailors and Early Agriculture: Papers in Honor of the Career of Alan H. Simmons" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prior to his long and distinguished professorial career at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Alan Simmons spent eight years in Reno at the Desert Research Institute (DRI), an independent soft-money component of Nevada’s university system. For a young Near Eastern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy S. Commendador. Bruce Finney.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing the prehistoric environment is vital to our understanding of past human use and occupation of a landscape. While many reconstructions, typically based on chemical and biological signatures found in sediment and ice cores, are available, we currently lack suitable records for Idaho’s eastern Snake River Plain. This is mainly due to the scarcity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Caitlin Doherty.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the time of its initial discovery by Alan Bryan nearly fifty years ago, the Mount Moriah occupation at Smith Creek Cave was one of the oldest in the Great Basin and played a critical role in establishing the terminal-Pleistocene age of stemmed-point technology in western North America. Today, what is now known as the Western Stemmed Tradition has been...