Channel Islands (Other Keyword)
1-7 (7 Records)
An important variable that influenced prehistoric human settlement patterns on California’s northern Channel Islands was the availability of freshwater. Existing models of settlement use watershed size as a proxy for water availability. However, in semi-arid regions, this approach has limitations because ephemeral streams common in these environments may lose much or all of their flow to groundwater. We have developed a hydrological model that incorporates measured and modeled...
Human Adaptations to Environmental Change on the California Channel Islands (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Palaeoeconomic and Environmental Reconstructions in Island and Coastal Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper provides an overview of human adaptations to environmental change during 13,000 years of human occupation on the California Channel Islands. In particular, I consider how the range of economically important species shifted with changing environmental conditions and how different foraging...
Plant use at Diablo Valdez, Santa Cruz Island: Evidence from macrobotanical and starch grain remains (2015)
This paper considers both macrobotanical and starch grain evidence for terrestrial plant use at Diablo Valdez (SCRI-619/620) on Santa Cruz Island, California. This inland site consists of a rock shelter as well as an open-air living space, and was occupied from ca. 5900 years ago and into the Historic period. Macrobotanical remains were recovered from 140 liters of soil, while starch grain analysis was conducted on six bowl fragments. This paper contextualizes these results within a broader...
Santa Barbara Island: insights into the prehistory of California’s Channel Islands through its smallest island (2017)
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...
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...
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...
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...