11,000 Year Old Seafaring Indian Sites Discovered on California Island
11,000-Year-Old Seafaring Indian Sites Discovered on California Island
Jan 06,2014 26 Comments
Just offshore from the chock-a-block development of Southern California, archaeologists have discovered some of the oldest sites of human occupation on the Pacific Coast.
Modern members of the Chumash, who have inhabited the Channel Islands for thousands of years, re-create a crossing to the islands in a tomol canoe. (NPS)
On Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands just 65 kilometers from Santa Barbara, nearly 20 sites have been found that reveal signs of prehistoric human activity, from massive middens of abalone shells to distinctive stone points and tool-making debris.
At least nine of the sites have what archaeologists say is definitive evidence of ancient Paleoindian occupation, about half of them having been dated to 11,000 to 12,000 years ago making their inhabitants some of the earliest knownsettlers of North Americas West Coast.
Finding these sites and the definitive evidence for early occupation is crucial and tells us that people were there, occupying the landscape at the end of the Pleistocene, said Dr. Torben Rick of the Smithsonian Institution, who led the survey that uncovered the sites.
The discovery adds hefty new data to the already mounting evidence that maritime Paleoindians also known as Paleocoastal peoples lived along the California coast at the end of the last ice age.
Such finds have important implications for the history of human migration, suggesting that at least some of Americas earliest settlers moved south from Alaska along the coast, rather than farther inland, where retreating glaciers are thought to have allowed passage to the continents interior.
Distinctive crescent-shaped stone tools, like this from neighboring San Miguel Island, are among the Paleocoastal artifacts that have been identified. (University of Oregon)
Uncovering hard evidence of this coastal migration has proved challenging, however, because the shorelines that Paleocoastal people would have followed have long since been submerged by rising seas.
But in recent years, surveys of Californias modern-day coasts and islands have turned up several prehistoric sites that are still on dry land, farther inland from the now-submerged shores.
It was while studying some of these sites on San Miguel Island another of the Channel Islands that Rick and his colleagues made a key observation: They noted that Paleocoastal settlements tended to have certain traits in common that made them more suitable than sites right on the water.
The earliest sites tended to be 1 to 7 kilometers from where the shoreline used to be, for example, in elevated areas that offered commanding views of the coast and often the islands interior. Optimal locations were also near sources of useful raw materials, like chert for making tools, as well as fresh water and rockshelters or caves for refuge.
With these factors in mind, Ricks team turned to Santa Rosa Island to survey its previously unexplored southwestern coast.
[Find out what similar predictive models have recently found: " 13 Ancient Villages Discovered in Wyoming Mountains May Redraw Map of Tribal Migrations "]
The island was already famous as the home of Arlington Man, perhaps the oldest human remains ever found in North America, discovered in 1959 and dated to 13,000 years ago.
But the southwestern portion of the island had received little scientific attention, and it fit many of the criteria Ricks team had identified. Whats more, it was the steepest part of the island, which meant it had been less susceptible to rising sea levels and more likely to still hold evidence of early sites.
Upon surveying the area, the team found 19 sites that showed signs of human occupation, mostly middens, or piles of detritus left over from generations of tool making and food preparation.
Although they were essentially prehistoric trash piles, these middens offered a wealth of useful archaeological clues, some deposits covering more than 75,000 square meters (over 18 acres).
Nine of the these sites contained the distinctive Channel Island barbed stone points that are indicative of Paleocoastal culture from the late Ice Age, Rick reported, and several also contained caches of shells from red abalone a staple food of Paleocoastal Indians.
They probably used boats since they had to get to the island, and they hunted a variety of marine birds, seals and sea lions and collected shellfish, Rick said. These are all early clues to human life ways at the [late] Pleistocene.
The large amounts of shells, found with stone tools several kilometers from the ancient shoreline, suggest that the shellfish were carried inland to be processed, Rick said.
Surveys of the islands southwestern coast turned up scatterings of stone points, abalone shells, and crescent-shaped tools. (Photo courtesy Torben Rick)
And even more important, the shells unlike stone can be radiocarbon dated. All four of the abalone shell middens returned dates from similar ranges, from 10,900 to 12,100 years ago.
Santa Rosas ancient inhabitants also left behind a number of unusual crescent-shaped tools made of chipped stone, artifacts similar to those found throughout the Great Basin, typically near water, but whose exact purpose, Rick said, was a topic of debate.
People have speculated from everything like hunting to even brain surgery a bizarre 100-year-old idea, he said. Today, we think they would have been used to hunt aquatic birds and possibly other fauna.
[Read about another unusual find in California: " Mass Grave of Prodigal Sons in California Poses Prehistoric Mystery "]
One sign absent from any of the newly discovered sites, however, was evidence of construction.
Unfortunately, there are no clear signs of a structure, Rick said. We are hoping to go back soon to one of these sites to excavate a larger area, and we hope to find some of this evidence.
The discoveries on Santa Rosa will likely bring more attention to the Channel Islands and Southern California for future research into the early coastal settlement of the Americas, Rick said.
But more research at these and other sites is still needed to help clarify the breadth and depth of the first Americans occupation on the Pacific Coast, he noted.
Now the important thing to do is excavate some of these sites in detail to see what more we can learn about ancient cultural practices, environmental changes, and other variables, he said. We of course, want to do other surveys like this to find other contemporary sites.
As excited about these finds as we are, to us they inspire more work.
Rick and his team report their findings in the Journal of Field Archaeology .
Torben C. Rick, Jon M. Erlandson, Nicholas P. Jew, & Leslie A. Reeder-Myers (2013). Archaeological survey, paleogeography, and the search for Late Pleistocene Paleocoastal peoples of Santa Rosa Island, California Journal of Field Archaeology DOI: 10.1179/0093469013Z.00000000065
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The further back we look, history keeps changing.
This is great fun. Thanks. I don't know anything about the Chumash. Interesting folks.
Grump, here is a link to their website.
That crescent shaped object looks like some kind of a scraper to me. Are both edges knapped thin?
The ones from San Miguel Island are ''flaked'' on both sides Brolly. I can't find anything on the ones from Santa Rosa Island.
2blue, it's the combination of things found that lead to this conclusion, not just the shells.
Debris pile, tool making instruments, and other items that were indicative of that time period.
Yeah, that is a bit strange, but they may have other indications that the shells were used as tools.
I love this kind of stuff, history keeps changing.
The shells were in midden heaps, garbage piles to the less sophisticated. So, being the careful scientists that archeologists usually are, I would imagine that they took their dating samples from several places throughout the individual sites, and an aggregate method was used to determine the ages of the shells.
From the abstract : We identified nine new Paleocoastal sites, including four radiocarbon dated to >11,000 cal b.p. that are among the oldest sites on North Americas Pacific coast.
The thought that the shells would somehow be older than the sites would seem to beg the question, why were they eating ancient shellfish?
why were they eating ancient shellfish?
Perhaps they have been pickled for late dinner.
Perhaps we are the least civilized residents BF. We sure know how to kill people in the name of democracy.
This kind of discovery is always exciting!
It is exciting Mac. There have been a number of them recently, that are changing the history of Turtle Island.
I'm no scientist, but I have caught a few fish. Those instruments look like something I'd use to remove the scales, particularly if I were doing a lot of them at one time. Since they had sharp edges, they would also be useful for cutting in just behind the gills to remove the fillets quickly and cleanly, before hanging the fillets up for drying and smoking.
I agree, the scrapper is, I believe, used to scale the fish.
Hence the teeth?
Yes Brolly. Scrappers used always have ''teeth'' to rid the fish of scales.
What do you think of this reasoning Kavika? If we assume that much of the fish protein for the entire year comes as a result of spawning runs (of Salmon or others), you would want to get the fish cleaned and on the smoking fire as quickly as possible, so that you would have more of the limited time available to catch more fish. Also, in a relatively warm climate (even during a glacial period), speed of processing would cut down on spoilage from the heat. Therefore, you would use something like this to speed up the cleaning process. Then you could use the head and guts as bait or chum to catch more. That would maximize the use of the time of the spawning run to put as much protein as possible in storage. That's almost the same thing that happens in professional canneries today, when they have a limited time to process as many fish as possible.
What I'm thinking, particularly if they find no evidence of year round habitation, is that that site may have been no more than a fish camp, only inhabited when the fish and shellfish were available. The end product would then have been transported back to the main village site, possibly even on the mainland. If it was there, hunters may have been sent inland to hunt other game while the fishermen did their work. That kind of job specialization suggests a fairly well organized society.
Good theory TTGA. The LA coastline was a giant wetland for thousands of years with a lot of inhabitants, and they when it went dry the people vanished. They came back when the water returned. The Cumash, and before them, the Tongvahave lived in the area for thousands of years, and were both a seafaring, and lived along the coast line.
It creates a lot of really interesting questions TTGA.
Further south, the Santa Catalina Islands have recorded ancient Indian life, dating back thousands of years.
I would think that Paleoindians were well organized society. Engaged in farming, hunting and fishing for survival. Those particular waters can be very rough and seafaring people would have to have excellent water skills if caught in any of the currents.