Stable Isotope Sourcing of Olivella Shell Beads from Central California

Summary

Although a temporally diagnostic type artifact, the pre-contact cultural role of Olivella beads is poorly understood for Central California and the San Francisco Bay Area. While important as an item of trade and burial wealth, the nature of Olivella bead origin and conveyance is uncertain. Stable isotope sourcing, using oxygen and carbon from serial sampling shell carbonate, provides a potential to locate where shell was collected for bead production. We document developments in a technique for interpreting seasonal marine isotope signatures along the California coast, and compare sourcing results for beads from possible manufacture, domestic, and funerary assemblages from several Middle and Late Period sites.

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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