Dissertation Improvement Grant: Social Space and Community Interaction in Late Holocene Coastal California: Archaeological Perspectives from the Northern Channel Islands

University Of Oregon Eugene, Eugene OR

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Jon Erlandson, MS Torben Rick will collect data for his doctoral dissertation research, excavating five archaeological sites on California's Northern Channel Islands that date within the last 4,000 years. Native peoples of the southern California Coast and Channel Islands were among the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers in the world. During the historic era, Chumash and Tongva peoples in the region lived in large villages or towns, some with as many as 1,000 residents, had hierarchical sociopolitical organization, and used shell bead money to purchase a variety of goods and services. The Northern Channel Islands also contain the earliest evidence of maritime peoples in North America and a spectacular record of coastal hunter-gatherers that spans the last 12,000 years. This continuous archaeological sequence, along with the excellent preservation of Channel Islands archaeological sites, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution of cultural complexity among hunter-gatherers with great time depth and relatively high precision. The archaeological sites where research will be conducted are extremely well preserved villages that contain dense accumulations of shellfish, fish and sea mammal bones, a variety of artifacts, and three of the sites also contain circular depressions that are the remains of house structures. These sites provide an important laboratory for documenting aspects of community and household life among coastal peoples in the region. Excavation and mapping of these villages will provide a means to assess the evolution of Chumash society, with a specific focus on how communities and households structured and maintained hierarchical sociopolitical organization. This project will increase our understanding of community and household archaeology, maritime adaptations, the evolution of complex hunter-gatherers, and the relationships between environmental and cultural changes. Ultimately, the data gathered will enhance our understanding of the causal mechanisms behind the development of hierarchy, social inequality, and other highly significant evolutionary changes in human behavior.