Food Residue Analysis on Soapstone Cooking Vessels in the Chumash Homeland: Implications for Changing Foodway Patterns during the Mission Period across the Colonial Landscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper discusses the results of pollen, phytolith, starch, and organic residue (FTIR) analyses conducted on soapstone cooking vessels in museum collections uncovered in the Los Angeles and Santa Barbara areas, California. The vessels were excavated from distinct chronological and spatial contexts in the Chumash homeland: a pre-Mission period site (CA-LAN-243), inside the indigenous adobe apartments at Mission La Purisima (CA-SBA-520), and a historic Chumash village outside the mission space (CA-SBA-209). We show changing patterns in Chumash foodway practices during the Mission period, which include not only the consumption of new foods but also the incorporation of new subsistence technologies. In the pre-Mission period, the Chumash used soapstone vessels to cook ground grass seeds and roots/tubers. However, during the Mission period, the Chumash began to cook corn (Zea mays) in soapstone bowls in the mission, while outside the mission, at site CA-SBA-209, we found evidence of wheat that was cut with a threshing sledge—an introduced Spanish technology. These findings parallel recent colonial studies that evaluate the changing socio-political landscape and highlight the dynamic interplay of Spanish and Native interactions in the creation of new practices and shared social identities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24280