Household Archaeology on the Northern Channel Islands of the Santa Barbara Coast, California

Summary

House depressions are visible at many archaeological sites on the Northern Channel Islands, including some that are thousands of years old, yet household archaeology is a topic that is often overlooked in the region. Documenting the number, size, location, and layout of house depressions can help in understanding past settlement strategies, access to resources, the emergence of cultural complexity, demography, cultural landscapes, environmental change, and craft specialization, among other significant issues. In this paper, we present data on house depressions and structures from archaeological sites on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel Islands and situate this information in a chronological framework. These data are analyzed and compared to ethnographic and ethnohistoric records that provide details about Chumash Indian houses in the Santa Barbara Channel area, both on the mainland and the islands. Some of these accounts suggest that island settlements are marginal when compared with those on the mainland. The perception of island settlements as marginal places is addressed in this paper through the analysis of detailed empirical evidence in the archaeological record. Changes through time in household organization are noted and correlated with demographic shifts, cultural landscapes, significant resources, climate change, and other important issues.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Re-evaluating the Marginality of California's Islands: Implications for Archaeological Interpretation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage