Seasonal Resource in Coastal Baja California: Pedestrian Survey in Colonet, Baja California, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Colonet region is located in northwestern Baja California, Mexico, and due to its geographic isolation and slow economic development, archaeological evidence of the prehistoric Yuman groups has been preserved for millennia. The region offers a unique research opportunity to examine the occupational sequence of late prehistoric people and the resource use and adaptation to the local environment and aridity of the Pacific coastal deserts. We present the results of our pedestrian survey work conducted in June 2022, which focused on systematic data collection on size variation, site location and density, and tool production and activity. The survey results in Colonet point to the surprising density of shell middens and secondary agave processing activities. The survey confirmed that seasonal shellfish collection and processing were the primary activities drawing people to the area, as noted in previous vehicular surveys. The inland locations, presence of agave knives, expedient tool manufacturing, and fire-affected rock suggest sites were selected based on more considerations than their proximity to coastal shell collection sites. The pedestrian survey’s focus on late prehistoric seasonal camps offers a valuable point of comparison to late prehistoric resource use and rise of social complexity in northern Baja Californian and Alta California.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36393.0