North American Archaeology Quiz #2 Review

Characteristics of California

Mild climate, very diverse landscape (deserts, forests, mountains, & beaches), abundance of game, shellfish, & sea mammals, rich foraging opportunities, lots of seeds, nuts, & edible plants

California regions or geographies

South Coast/Channel Islands, Central Coast, North Coast, Sierra Nevadas, Central Valley

Early Holocene

9,000-7,000 BP

Nursery Site

18 large pit houses, sedentary community, subsistence based on sea mammals & fish

Middle Holocene

7,000-3,000 BP

Mortar & Pestle

Used across California, commonly viewed as an acorn processing technology

Middle Holocene Regionalization

First substantial settlement along the North Coast, increased sedentism, focus on acorns, large cemeteries

Late Holocene

3,000-150 BP

Bedrock Mortars

Mortars cut into bedrock, drastically increases the scale of acorn processing

Sierra Nevada

Permanent villages - large villages contained pit houses and middens organized around bedrock mortar acorn production centers

Acorn toolkit

As it becomes increasingly sedentary, women gained power to control where villages are located, food supply, and tradeable surplus

Chumash

Coastal culture emerges around Santa Barbara

Shell beads

staggering numbers of shell beads produced in the Channel Islands & Santa Barbara area

Brotherhood of the Tomol

Tomol boat building & knowledge = tightly controlled by the Brotherhood of the Tomol

Rock art

Elaborate rock art tradition in the Santa Barbara region, painted by religious specialists or shamans, depict interactions with the spirit world

Chiefs

3,000-1,000 BP = emergence of a leader who wielded paramount authority

Did the rise of chiefs happen slowly due to internal transformations or quickly as a response to outside pressure?

Main theories:

Population growth & rise of shell bead production & organizational needs = rise of chiefs

Environmental pressures & political leadership required to maintain food resources

Boating technology & control of trade = chiefly power

Cultural Evolution

Theory states that the evolution of society progresses from simple to complex & part of this complexity is the development of social hierarchies, political authority, & stratification

Band Societies

Small mobile hunting & gathering/foraging groups whose social structure was basically egalitarian

Northern Coast

Southern Alaska, Prince Rupert Harbor, Haida Gwaii

Central Coast

Mainland & Western side of Vancouver Island

South Coast

Georgia Straight, Puget Sound, Oregon Coast

Important geographic features:

Fraser river, Skeena River, Columbia River

Archaic Period

9,500-5,000 BP

Archaic Period

Use of microblades instead of projectile points, mobile population

Namu Site

9,700 BP, one of the longest occupied sites on the northwest coast, potentially a semi-sedentary site, shift away from microblades towards elaborate bifaces

Bear Cove Site

8,000 BP, subsistence = large sea mammals indicates that inhabitants had open water boats & harpoon toolkit to hunt large sea mammals

Early Pacific Period

5,000-3,500 BP

Early Pacific Period

Population increase, shifts in subsistence practices (increased exploitation of clams & mussels & fish), shifting toolkit from chipped stone tools to ground stone tools, establishment of cemeteries, some sedentary villages, deep oral histories

Adawx

“true telling” - Tsimshian oral tradition

Hidden Falls Site

4,600-3,200 BP, evidence of early markers of rank (labrets & ground stone pendants)

Maurer Site

4,800 BP, first evidence of a permanent or semi-permanent structure in the region

Green Point Site

4,000 BP, 4 burials - 35 yo male was associated with thousands of beads

Tsawwassen Site

4,000-3,500 BP, 100+ graves - 40s male buried with 11,000 stone beads, 11-14 yo boy buried with 53,000 stone beads

Sechelt Inlet Burial Site: DjRW-14 (Leader’s Cemetery)

4 graves, family members buried 3,000 BP, incredibly rich bead burials (300,000+ stone beads buried with older male, 4 ritually broken projectiles & antler earspools with woman, infant’s body covered in red ochre)

Archaeologists think:

Existence of elites, hereditary wealth —> ability of elites to harness & control labor

Extreme wealth & hereditary status —> chiefly power & lineage

Wealth/power NOT based on intensive food production & storage (complex hunter-gatherer society)

Middle Pacific

3,500-1,800 BP

Middle Pacific

Intensification of resource exploitation & storage, increase in fishing volume through weirs and traps, clam gardens, development of storage technology, sea-worthy canoes, growing population, massive shell middens

Bentwood boxes

Sophisticated watertight boxes used to store oil & food, cooking, boiling water, burying dead

Paul Mason Site

First village site on NWC, 3,000 BP, rectangular plank houses laid out in two rows - stratification of society

Plank house sites

extended family group housing, highly stratified spaces, associated cemeteries

Grave goods

different social ranks of individuals, NWC artistic style, bone/copper/stone ojects/labrets

Late Pacific Period

1,800-200 BP

Late Pacific

population increase, increased warfare, proliferation of woodworking tools, forts, burial practices shift from cemeteries to burial in trees, potlachs, totem poles

Ozette Site

300 BP, Washington State, Makah Culture, large permanent village that was covered by a mudslide perfectly preserving it as an archaeological site