Assimilation, Acculturation, and Individual Agency in a Coastal Gabrielino Village

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ethnohistoric accounts suggest that the Gabrielino were a complex hunter-gatherer society similar to their Chumash neighbors. They had a rich and elaborate material culture and a ranked society with a chiefly class. Building upon previous research on Chumash burial grounds, we report the results of an intensive multi-year study of a Gabrielino village and burial ground that was utilized for hundreds of years in west Los Angeles. An examination of changing mortuary treatments and associated artifacts reveals that high status social classes or roles developed in coastal Gabrielino society in the late Mission period with little evidence for social differentiation prior to that time. We argue that the emergence of status and role differentiation is one of several responses by the Gabrielino to both the adverse conditions and opportunities presented by colonial contact with Spanish missionaries and ranchers, and the environmental changes they wrought.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39806.0