From Shore to Mountain: Insights into Resource Selection and Processing along the Central California Coast

Summary

Salvage excavations conducted in the 1970s at the Red, White, and Blue Beach site (CA-SCR-35), located in northern Santa Cruz County on the central California coast on Monterey Bay, recovered a large and diverse vertebrate faunal assemblage with a well-defined Middle Period (2800–900 cal BP) component. Few faunal assemblages from this area of the Central Coast have been thoroughly analyzed and little is known about resource selection and processing during this time. I use archaeofaunal data from SCR-35 to explore prey choice, handling practices, and seasonality of occupation, comparing these to recently published data from CA-SCR-9, a generally contemporaneous site in the costal uplands of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This comparison contributes to understanding of Middle Period economic strategies by providing a synchronic and regionally specific comparison of coastal and inland extractive tactics in this currently understudied part of California.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20349