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Contexts of Cultural Change in Insular California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Jeanne E. Arnold ,
Roger H. Colten  and
Scott Pletka
Jeanne E. Arnold
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Institute of Archaeology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095
Roger H. Colten
Affiliation:
Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, P.O. Box 208118, New Haven, CT 06520-8118
Scott Pletka
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095
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Abstract

Archaeological and ethnohistorical researchers in California are reaping the rewards from a wealth of new information about precontact and early historical cultural diversity, technologies, and marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Our recent investigations into the later prehistory of the island groups of southern California have centered on processes of sociopolitical evolution, including the emergence of status differentiation, evidence for intensification of craft production, and associated changes in human uses of animal resources as societies became more complex. We have linked some specific changes in diet, labor organization, and exchange to documented climatic disturbances, suggesting that opportunities created by such disruptions may have accounted in part for the timing of changes, but were not their cause in any mechanistic or simplistic sense. A recent American Antiquity report overlooks the primary results of this research and isolates the environmental data from a broad multidimensional model of cultural change in coastal California. We provide an update on the status of Channel Islands archaeology and identify the fundamental problems with approaches that extract and decontextualize environmental processes from cultural processes by assessing limited faunal data sets.

lnvestigadores en arqueología e historia étnica de California están cosechando los frutos de la enorme cantidad de informatión reciente acerca de tecnologías, ecosistemas marinos y terrestres, y la diversidad cultural antes del contacto espahol y durante la primera fase histórica después de este contacto. Nuestras recientes investigaciones en la prehistoria de los grupos de islas al sur de California se han centrado en la evolutión socio-política, en la aparición de diferentes rangos sociales, en la evidencia de intensificatión de la productión artesanal especializada, y en los cambios en el uso de recursos animates mientras la sociedad se organiza en forma mas compleja. Hemos asociado algunos cambios especificos en la dieta, organizatión del trabajo, e intercambio, a disturbios climáticos documentados, sugiriendo que oportunidades creadas por esos disturbios pueden explicar en parte cuándo estos cambios ocurrieron, pew estos disturbios no fueron la causa de los cambios en ningún sentido mecánico o simplista. Un reporte reciente en American Antiquity omite los resultados primarios de estas investigaciones y separa la informatión relacionada al medio ambiente de un modelo multidimensional de cambio cultural en la costa de California. Proveemos nueva informatión sobre el estado de la arqueología de Channel Islands e identificamos problemas fundamentales en los enfoques que sacan de contexto procesos medio ambientales al evaluar grupos limitados de informatión faunística sin relacionarlos con procesos culturales.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 300 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1997

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References

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