Chumash (Other Keyword)
1-13 (13 Records)
I analyze more than 400 lithic artifacts associated with the development of intensive Chumash shell-drilling activities from four sites on Santa Cruz Island (SCRI), CA. By the second millennium CE, the Chumash of the northern Channel Islands had developed a specialized bead-making industry and a parallel industry of formal microdrills to perforate those beads (as documented by Arnold [1987]). During the latter part of the Middle Period (AD 900-1150), trapezoidal microdrills dominated; in the...
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...
Cache Cave: Site Structure and Chronology (2015)
This paper presents an overview of the site structure within the confines of Cache Cave with a particular focus on excavated crevices, deposits, and features. We also present the results of 25 AMS dates so far submitted from the site. These dates include a range of material from basketry, cordage, matting, reeds, bone objects, and charcoal. In total, this program represents the most comprehensively dated Chumash cache cave assemblage yet achieved and yields important data regarding site usage...
Classifying Soapstone Cooking Pots in the Santa Barbara Channel Region (2016)
The Chumash manufactured cooking vessels using soapstone from Southern California quarries for thousands of years, especially between A.D. 1500 and 1804. These vessels have been recovered in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging fin form small cups to large ollas with small orifices that stand over two feet tall. Hundreds of Chumash soapstone cooking vessels were collected by early antiquarians in California and are curated in museums throughout North America with little information regarding...
Exploring Temporal and Geographical Aspects of Chumash Mortuary Practice and Ceremonial Integration (2024)
This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric evidence indicate that certain ceremonial objects were exclusively associated with 'Antap ritual specialists and were used in multi-community Chumash religious ceremonies. Analyses of the evolution of the form of these...
Forget Me Nots: Smaller Collections Need Archaeologists Too (2015)
From Native Americans to Spanish and European settlers, Southern California has a rich history. One town in particular, Simi Valley, incorporated in 1969, was home to several Chumash villages, part of the Santiago Pico 1795 Land Grant, and attracted European settlers. CA-VEN-346, the El Rancho Simi Adobe, was occupied during all three eras. It was a Chumash village, home to Santiago Pico, and home to European settler Robert Strathearn and family. When Robert Strathearn purchased the El Rancho...
Introducing the Cache Cave Archaeological Project: Background, Aims, and Methods (2015)
Caching in caves and rockshelters has been documented in many parts of the Chumash region and beyond, but the discovery and excavation of this Cache Cave provides one of the first opportunities to document cached items in context, assess formation processes, and interpret a site of this kind with preservation of perishable artifacts, as well as materials that are potentially associated with their manufacture and maintenance. This paper introduces the Cache Cave site, situates this site among...
A Matter of Time – Applications of portable X-Ray Fluorescence in establishing rock art chronologies (2015)
The aim in this examination was to examine the potential for portable XRF technology to contribute to chronologies of in situ rock art. In order to do this pXRF data from Chumash rock art panels in the Wind Wolves Preserve in South Central California were compared with one another, and with readings from ochre found in excavated deposits. These ochre deposits are associated with other artefacts which have known dates. The results showed that multiple pigments were used within each rock art panel...
The Reorganization of Shell Bead Production in California during the Historic Period (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores Olivella shell money bead production among the Chumash during the Mission period in south-central California. An extensive examination of bead-making detritus recovered during recent archaeological excavations at Mission La Purisima Concepcion yielded insight into this extensive industry that flourished in the early nineteenth century....
San Buenaventura's Chumash Community during the Late Mission Period (2024)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Chronicles of Colonialism: Unraveling Temporal Variability in Indigenous Experiences of Colonization in California Missions", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Mexico's independence from Spain resulted in major changes impacting California's Mission Indian communities. Important documents from the1820s permit a fascinating glimpse into the economic organization and social fabric of Mission San Buenaventura's...
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...
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...
What’s in the Oven? Specialized Processing, or Mixed Food Preparation in the Chumash Kitchen (2015)
The distinction between generalized hunter-gatherers and economic specialists has long interested archaeologists reliant on faunal and floral remains. Resource-processing features provide another line of evidence to address the topic, though specialized facilities do not necessarily imply patterns of specialized subsistence. Chumash inhabitants of the Santa Monica Mountains provide a case in point. Earth ovens interpreted as specialized resource-processing facilities are commonly excavated, yet...