The Evolution of Sociopolitical Organization in Northwestern California

Summary

Northwestern California has long been recognized as a unique area at the margin of both the Pacific Northwest Coast and California. Recent excavations at sites along the Smith River in Tolowa ancestral territory can help us elucidate long-term evolutionary trends among affluent foragers in the region. This paper will examine some of the profound alterations in human organization that occur at Red Elderberry (CA-DNO-26), a site located along a portion of the Smith River known as a highly productive salmon procurement location. Included is a review of recent analyses of Red Elderberry site materials and comparisons to recent excavations at a series of coastal sites along the Del Norte and Humboldt County coast. Together these investigations provide new insights into settlement and subsistence, in particular a better understanding of the evolution of sociopolitical organization during the Late Holocene after the rise of sedentary plank houses villages.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times: Mobility and Subsistence in a Tale of Two Sites in the Smith River Basin of Northwestern California

Keywords

Spatial Coverage