Ethnohistoric Insights Pertaining to the Emigdiano Chumash and Other Southern San Joaquin Valley Indigenous Groups

Summary

The native groups who inhabited the San Emigdio Mountains on the southwestern edge of the San Joaquin Valley are believed to have been speakers of an interior dialect of one of the Chumashan languages, although which one has been open to debate. Certainly the Emigdiano Chumash occupied an important position in the economic exchange system that linked indigenous Kitanemuk and Yokuts groups of the San Joaquin Valley with coastal Chumash peoples. Ethnohistorical study of records kept by Franciscan missionaries shed light on the histories of the native groups who inhabited this region and provide important information regarding social interactions as reflected in reconstructed kinship and marriage patterns. These ethnohistoric data provide important contextual information to aid archaeological interpretation and supplement ethnographic and oral historical information collected by early twentieth century anthropologists, including C. Hart Merriam, Alfred L. Kroeber, and John P. Harrington.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Cache Cave in Context: Unveiling New Discoveries in South Central California

Keywords

Spatial Coverage