Expedient Stone Tool Analysis from Tule Creek (CA-SNI-25)

Summary

San Nicolas Island is the most remote of the California Channel Islands and has been inhabited since the Early Holocene. The island has an abundant supply of highly indurated sandstones as well as quartzites, metavolcanics, and metasedimentary rocks associated with densely packed conglomerate beds. Although there are no microcrystalline rocks such as obsidians, cherts, and fused shales, the local island toolstone is ideal for expedient tool technologies and for working sandstone. The Native islanders made use of local materials for everyday activities such as hunting, food processing, shell fishhook production, and other important domestic undertakings. In this paper we examine expedient tool technology at a late Holocene village site located on the north coast of the island that has been dated to between AD 1200 and European contact. We conducted our spatial analysis by selecting several units associated with fishing technologies and comparing the expedient tools with units selected from the same loci (East Locus) but without association to fishing technologies. These expedient tools were then compared to units selected from Mound B, another loci within the site, that is primarily associated with residential habitation. The results of this expedient tool analysis from CA-SNI-25 will be discussed in this presentation.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage