Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

Mortar and pestle technology has long been considered prima facie evidence for the intensive use and storage of acorns in pre-contact California. The relatively late adoption of this technology has commonly been interpreted as a direct measure of population pressure and?due to the presumed low caloric return rate of acorns?declining foraging efficiency. Conversely, hand-stone and milling-slab technology was used throughout the Holocene, and was equated with the non-intensive processing of small seeds. Here we decouple these erroneous assumptions by demonstrating that acorns are among the most productive native plant foods widely available in California, and small seeds are among the least productive. Archaeobotanical data also show that the regular use of acorns in central California began early in the Holocene when hand-stones and milling-slabs were the only milling technology used. Bowl mortars and pestles first appear in some parts of central California by 7,000 years ago. Because they are highly efficient but costly to produce and transport, they are typically found in residentially stable contexts, characteristic of a transition to delayed-return, energy-maximizing economies. Hand-stone and milling-slab technology persists in residentially mobile situations well into the late Holocene and was used to process a variety of resources including acorns, reflecting time-minimizing, immediate-return economies. We conclude that milling tool form has as much to do with labor investment, processing efficiency, and settlement strategy as the types of resources processed.

A collection of 2,185 bird bones recovered from twelve sites was analyzed to determine how the Fremont people made use of birds and their remains. Although bird bones are present at many of the Fremont sites that have been excavated in the last few decades, bird remains are rarely studied by archaeologists. The relative abundance of bird taxa and the contexts of bird bones suggest how some bird families were used by the Fremont people. We combine data from our bird-bone assemblage with data provided by Parmalee (1980) to determine which bird families are most commonly found as dietary remains or as raw materials for manufacturing artifacts. GIS data suggest that waterfowl were hunted primarily at wetland sites, while the Fremont people at open desert sites focused their bird hunting efforts on grouse. We found that the Fremont people used birds for a variety of purposes, including as food sources and as raw materials for tools and artifacts involving bones and feathers. Contextual data for bird bones recovered from Wolf Village and Baker Village suggest that some bird species were used at possible ceremonial and communal structures.

We present results from excavations at several shell midden sites in the region of Bajamar-Jatay, along the northwest coast of Baja California, Mexico. The morphology of stone cooking features is discussed in connection with potential uses and associated faunal remains, which indicate a diet based on the exploitation of nearshore marine resources. Under the assumption that differential consumption of harvested food resources may have influenced the type of heated stone structures used for cooking and processing, we suggest that the morphological differences between heated stone features are not random. The structure and style of a heated-rock cooking feature may be related to the types of foods that were prepared and the methods used to cook them. Ethnographic information supplements the archaeological data provided here and further supports our interpretations.

This article presents an overview of the Paíipai community of Santa Catarina, Baja California, from observations made during preliminary field visits that contributed to an ongoing ceramic study. Previous ethnoarchaeological investigations were dedicated to observing the ìancestralî paddle and anvil ceramic technology, and characterizing vessels as either ìtraditionalî or ìnon-traditionalî based on how closely they resembled early (pre-contact) forms. More recent ceramic objects came to be viewed by anthropologists as ìcontemporary artî or the result of an ìevolutionî of an ancient tradition. My proposal reframes anthropological notions of time and space to account for observed elements of both continuity and change in current forms, and to merge past and present, local and global contexts. Semi-structured interviews with ceramists revealed the importance of memory in ascribing meaning to the forms they produce. Exploring the significance of recent objects for the first time meant reflecting on socioeconomic conditions in the village ? such details were overlooked by earlier archaeologists, who were primarily interested in precontact-period societies.

This paper presents a description and analysis of an obsidian fluted point recently discovered within the bounds of the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR) in southern Nevada. Analyses include physical and technological descriptions of the point and source analysis of the obsidian from which it is made. These analyses are followed by a discussion of the typological attribution of the point based on a recent comparison by Beck et al. (2019) of 462 Far Western fluted points with 95 Clovis points from the Southwest, Plains, and Northwest. We conclude with a discussion of where the NTTR point fits in the regionís prehistory, and what its raw material source suggests about population mobility during the terminal Pleistocene.

This paper presents two more radiocarbon dates derived from CA-LAN-1 (also known as the Tank Site), located within the Topanga Cultural Preserve in Topanga State Park. Building upon the first date (published in this journal in 2015), the new dates derived from the collections held at the Phoebe Hearst Museum confirm the age of the early component at the site yet suggest the existence of probable bioturbation that has potentially obscured the age of the presumably younger ìTopanga IIIî component. Specific information on the contexts of these dates, their conventional and calibrated ages, and a discussion of their significance relative to the rest of the site deposit and to the region as a whole is presented below.

The following list of dissertations, all of which have appeared since a similar list was published in Vol 29, No. 2, 2009 a decade ago, is intended to call attention to significant new scholarship that might be relevant to a readerís particular research interests but might otherwise be overlooked. Some works on the list have since been published in one form or another, though most have not. Summaries can be found in ProQuest: Dissertation Abstracts, which is readily available online, and many can also be obtained in the form of complete texts. Readers are urged to bring any relevant dissertation that may have been inadvertently left off the list to the attention of the editors.