Jeanne Arnold’s Legacy on California’s Channel Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In honor of Jeanne Arnold, I discuss major theoretical and methodological themes in her research on the northern California’s Channel Islands including 1) her focus on Late Holocene households as relevant units of past decision-making and current analysis, 2) lithic tool production and exchange, specifically chert resources and microlith industries on Santa Cruz Island, and 3) environmental context in relationship to major drivers of complexity within Chumash societies. In contrast to the emphasis placed on context in archaeological interpretation, what is not considered and articulated as often are the contemporary contexts of scientific inquiry in which different types and scales of context are situated. Citing publications from the early 1990s to early 2000s, both her own and responses to them, I also consider the gendered and processual context of California archaeology in which she operated and advanced anthropological understandings of island economies and hunter-gatherer societies. Finally, I reflect on how this broader context influenced responses to Arnold’s work and how her contributions continue to inform archaeological research on the Channel Islands today, with recent scholarship having expanded on her hypotheses and data sets in important ways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38728.0