Recognizing Post-Columbian Indigenous Sites in California’s Colonial Hinterlands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Recognizing and Recording Post-1492 Indigenous Sites in North American Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Land-use patterns of seasonally mobile hunter-gatherers present a particular set of challenges to archaeological recognition of post-1492 indigenous residential sites in the colonial hinterlands of California. The relatively short duration of site use, frequent re-use of sites episodically occupied in the more distant past, and fine temporal scale often required for archaeological study of cultural practices in the wake of colonialism necessitate a multifaceted approach. This research strategy entails: (1) creative and exhaustive use of diverse data sources, including documents, images, and material evidence; (2) innovative approaches to inferring site formation, chronology, and organization; and (3) a formal iterative method that feeds data back into the identification process and builds on often subtle differences between components dating before and after 1492. This paper illustrates this research strategy via examples from studies in Yosemite National Park that also have relevance to archaeological identification of post-1492 indigenous sites elsewhere in North America, including areas where very different land-use practices were pursued.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Recognizing and Recording Post-1492 Indigenous Sites in North American Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23104