CLIMATE CHANGE AND SUBSISTENCE EXCHANGE IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: WAS WESTERN SEA-PURSLANE A CHANNEL ISLAND TRADE GOOD?

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Fauvelle ◽  
Ellen Esch ◽  
Andrew Somerville
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Food Product ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Cruz Island ◽  
Plant Foods ◽  
Resource Stress ◽  
Alternate Possibility ◽  
Channel Region

A popular model for social evolution in the Santa Barbara Channel region holds that, during times of resource stress, islanders would trade with mainlanders for plant foods in order to supplement island diets. Recently, western sea-purslane (Sesuvium verrucosum) has been suggested as a primary food product involved in this exchange. This report presents new caloric values forSesuvium verrucosumand other plant foods that have been indicated as possible cross-channel trade goods. We argue that western sea-purslane is unlikely to have been a major trade item and suggest an alternate possibility for the presence of sea-purslane seeds in archaeological middens on Santa Cruz Island. While climate change may indeed have impacted social histories in the Channel Region, we argue that current data do not support the transportation of plant foods as having been a major component in this process.

The Island Chumash and Exchange in the Santa Barbara Channel Region

2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 570-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina M. Gill ◽  
Jon M. Erlandson
Keyword(s):  
Social Complexity ◽  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Plant Foods ◽  
Local Plant ◽  
Experimental Approaches ◽  
Channel Region

Fauvelle (2013) used experimental approaches to evaluate whether acorns were an important commodity traded from mainland groups to the Island Chumash. Consistent with a dearth of acorn remains found in island sites, he concluded that acorns were not a major export. We agree with this conclusion, but Fauvelle never adequately explains why acorns were not a major trade item and proposes that trade for high-quality asphaltum, supposedly unavailable on the islands, drove an intensification of Chumash social complexity. We believe the Island Chumash had abundant local plant foods, asphaltum, and other resources.

scholarly journals Intrashell Radiocarbon Variability in Marine Mollusks

Radiocarbon ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 387-400 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brendan J Culleton ◽  
Douglas J Kennett ◽  
B Lynn Ingram ◽  
Jon M Erlandson ◽  
John R Southon
Keyword(s):  
Deep Ocean ◽  
Mytilus Californianus ◽  
Ocean Water ◽  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Complex Product ◽  
Deep Ocean Water ◽  
San Miguel Island ◽  
Ams Dating ◽  
Channel Region

We demonstrate variable radiocarbon content within 2 historic (AD 1936) and 2 prehistoric (about 8200 BP and 3500 BP) Mytilus californianus shells from the Santa Barbara Channel region, California, USA. Historic specimens from the mainland coast exhibit a greater range of intrashell variability (i.e. 180–240 14C yr) than archaeological specimens from Daisy Cave on San Miguel Island (i.e. 120 14C yr in both shells). δ13C and δ18O profiles are in general agreement with the up welling of deep ocean water depleted in 14C as a determinant of local marine reservoir correction (ΔR) in the San Miguel Island samples. Upwelling cycles are difficult to identify in the mainland specimens, where intrashell variations in 14C content may be a complex product of oceanic mixing and periodic seasonal inputs of 14C-depeleted terrestrial runoff. Though the mechanisms controlling ΔR at subannual to annual scales are not entirely clear, the fluctuations represent significant sources of random dating error in marine environments, particularly if a small section of shell is selected for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating. For maximum precision and accuracy in AMS dating of marine shells, we recommend that archaeologists, paleontologists, and 14C lab personnel average out these variations by sampling across multiple increments of growth.

Circulation in the Point Conception-Santa Barbara Channel region

1986 ◽  
Vol 91 (C1) ◽  
pp. 877 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. H. Brink ◽  
R. D. Muench
Keyword(s):  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Point Conception ◽  
Channel Region

Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of Prehistoric California: Chiefs, Specialists, and Maritime Adaptations of the Channel Islands

1992 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne E. Arnold
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
New World ◽  
Channel Islands ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Maritime Adaptations ◽  
Channel Region ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

The Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel region were among the most economically and politically complex hunter–gatherer cultures of the New World. In recent decades, rich ethnohistorical documents pertaining to Chumash culture were analyzed, thus providing an excellent foundation for understanding the simple chiefdom that was in place as explorers and missionaries arrived in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Current archaeological research on the Channel Islands focuses on the emergence of ranked society in Chumash prehistory, with special emphasis on political developments and environmental stresses that contributed to cultural evolution. A wide range of data acquired from the Channel Islands illuminates a new model of the rise of complexity. This model of chiefdom emergence is based on population-resource imbalances, political opportunism, and the manipulation of labor by rising elites. Diverse lines of evidence must be employed to evaluate the timing, causes, and consequences of increasing complexity.

scholarly journals ‘Strengthening community from the inside out’: Transformative possibility for climate change resilience and adaptation in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kaitlyn Simon
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Critical Geography ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Alternate Possibility ◽  
Political Act

<p>How do we organise society and adjust our human relationships with the natural environment to adapt to a changing climate? How do we decide to make these adjustments? These questions shape Aotearoa-New Zealand climate change discourse across adaptation research and central and local government policy. A resilience approach to adaptation is one conceptual response that has gained popularity over the past decade. However, some critical geographers argue that the dominant typologies of resilience have been normalised as neoliberal capitalist strategies and positioned as ‘neutral processes’, and that these strategies can perpetuate inequity and unsustainability. Critical geographers therefore suggest focusing on addressing the root causes of inequity and unsustainability through transformative resilience and adaptation.  This research builds on critical geography work by exploring how Common Unity Project Aotearoa (CUPA), a charitable trust located in Te Awa Kairangi-Hutt City, is fostering a community that understands and performs transformative possibilities for resilience and adaptation. For community members of CUPA, ethical actions of a community economy, a process of collective learning and an ability to make sustainability accessible contribute to transformative adaptation and resilience. Exploration of these themes provides a grounded example of how communities can adapt to climate change in ways that also seek to transform inequitable and unsustainable capitalist relations with one another and with the natural environment. CUPA’s transformative work poses implications for councils and decision-makers seeking to build resilience and the capacity to adapt in community, offering alternate possibility for discourse, decision-making, participation and engagement.  I approach this project as a scholar-activist in recognition that research is a performative, political act. Through a scholar-activist methodology I use participant observation and interviews to gather insight and information. I ground my critical geography lens in care in order to contribute to a knowledge-making around climate change based in possibility and multiplicity, rather than of authority and judgement.</p>

Global hydrology modelling and uncertainty: running multiple ensembles with a campus grid

2010 ◽  
Vol 368 (1926) ◽  
pp. 4005-4021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon N. Gosling ◽  
Dan Bretherton ◽  
Keith Haines ◽  
Nigel W. Arnell
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resource ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Climate Models ◽  
Resource Stress ◽  
Runoff Changes ◽  
Campus Grid ◽  
The Impact

Uncertainties associated with the representation of various physical processes in global climate models (GCMs) mean that, when projections from GCMs are used in climate change impact studies, the uncertainty propagates through to the impact estimates. A complete treatment of this ‘climate model structural uncertainty’ is necessary so that decision-makers are presented with an uncertainty range around the impact estimates. This uncertainty is often underexplored owing to the human and computer processing time required to perform the numerous simulations. Here, we present a 189-member ensemble of global river runoff and water resource stress simulations that adequately address this uncertainty. Following several adaptations and modifications, the ensemble creation time has been reduced from 750 h on a typical single-processor personal computer to 9 h of high-throughput computing on the University of Reading Campus Grid. Here, we outline the changes that had to be made to the hydrological impacts model and to the Campus Grid, and present the main results. We show that, although there is considerable uncertainty in both the magnitude and the sign of regional runoff changes across different GCMs with climate change, there is much less uncertainty in runoff changes for regions that experience large runoff increases (e.g. the high northern latitudes and Central Asia) and large runoff decreases (e.g. the Mediterranean). Furthermore, there is consensus that the percentage of the global population at risk to water resource stress will increase with climate change.

Our disappearing past: a GIS analysis of the vulnerability of coastal archaeological resources in California’s Santa Barbara Channel region

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie A. Reeder ◽  
Torben C. Rick ◽  
Jon M. Erlandson
Keyword(s):  
Gis Analysis ◽  
Santa Barbara Channel ◽  
Santa Barbara ◽  
Channel Region
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