Identifying Specialized 19th Century Fishing Camps on California's Northern Channel Islands: Applying AMS Radiocarbon Dating to Historical Sites

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 909-916 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd J Braje ◽  
Torben C Rick
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Channel Islands ◽  
Ams Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Northern Channel Islands ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
Site Types

California's Northern Channel Islands have long been an epicenter of specialized fishing economies dating from 13,000 yr ago to the mid-19th century. With thousands of well-preserved shell middens, some dominated by single shellfish species and little to no material culture, it can be difficult to distinguish between specialized prehistoric and historical deposits at some site types. Beginning at least in the Early Holocene and continuing into the Historic period, California mussels, turban snails, and abalone were targeted for specialized collection and processing by Native Americans and later Chinese and Euro-American fishers. Here, we demonstrate how selective accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of specialized abalone processing camps can help distinguish between prehistoric and historical sites. While unconventional, our case study demonstrates the utility of14C dating at sites less than 300 yr old.

Return to Little Harbor, Santa Catalina Island, California: A Critique of the Marine Paleotemperature Model

1995 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Mark Raab ◽  
Katherine Bradford ◽  
Judith F. Porcasi ◽  
William J. Howard
Keyword(s):  
Sea Surface ◽  
Channel Islands ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Sea Temperature ◽  
Weak Evidence ◽  
Northern Channel Islands ◽  
Recent Case Study ◽  
Santa Catalina Island ◽  
Starvation Conditions

Marine paleotemperature is a significant factor in the subsistence productivity of many coastal regions and may be an important factor in the evolution of maritime societies. A California paleotemperature model, spanning 8,000 calendar years, correlates periods of high sea surface temperatures with decreased marine subsistence productivity. A recent case study involving this model identified warming conditions between A.D. 1150 to 1300 as a major cause of subsistence distress for dwellers of the northern Channel Islands. These results are questionable, based on a comparison with data from other sites and periods of high sea temperature. Research at the Little Harbor site, one of the most extensively researched in the Channel Islands, shows that high sea temperature about 5,200 calendar years ago may have introduced warm-water faunas but not starvation conditions. Evidence from other sites occupied during subsequent warming cycles, including the event between A.D. 1150 to 1300, points to similar conclusions. Understanding the effects of long- and short-term ocean temperature cycles, a focus on only a small segment of the Holocene paleotemperature curve, and weak evidence that food abundance was affected by sea temperature are problems that must be overcome before the validity of the paleotemperature model can be accepted.

AMS radiocarbon dating of mortar: The case study of the medieval UNESCO site of Modena

2015 ◽  
Vol 361 ◽  
pp. 614-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lubritto Carmine ◽  
Marta Caroselli ◽  
Stefano Lugli ◽  
Fabio Marzaioli ◽  
Sara Nonni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Ams Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Unesco Site

Origins and antiquity of the island fox (Urocyon littoralis) on California's Channel Islands

2009 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torben C. Rick ◽  
Jon M. Erlandson ◽  
René L. Vellanoweth ◽  
Todd J. Braje ◽  
Paul W. Collins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Native Americans ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Channel Islands ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Terrestrial Mammals ◽  
Island Fox ◽  
Northern Channel Islands ◽  
Urocyon Littoralis ◽  
Human Colonization ◽  
Natural Dispersal

AbstractThe island fox (Urocyon littoralis) is one of few reportedly endemic terrestrial mammals on California's Channel Islands. Questions remain about how and when foxes first colonized the islands, with researchers speculating on a natural, human-assisted, or combined dispersal during the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. A natural dispersal of foxes to the northern Channel Islands has been supported by reports of a few fox bones from late Pleistocene paleontological localities. Direct AMS 14C dating of these “fossil” fox bones produced dates ranging from ∼ 6400 to 200 cal yr BP, however, postdating human colonization of the islands by several millennia. Although one of these specimens is the earliest securely dated fox from the islands, these new data support the hypothesis that Native Americans introduced foxes to all the Channel Islands in the early to middle Holocene. However, a natural dispersal for the original island colonization cannot be ruled out until further paleontological, archaeological, and genetic studies (especially aDNA [ancient DNA]) are conducted.

The Inherited Past of the Broch: On Antiquarian Discourse and Contemporary Archaeology

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW BAINES
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Contemporary Archaeology ◽  
The North

In reading archaeological texts, we expect to be engaged in a characteristically archaeological discourse, with a specific and recognisable structure and vocabulary. In evaluating the published work of 19th Century antiquarians, we will inevitably look for points of contact between their academic language and our own; success or failure in the identification of such points of contact may prompt us to recognise a nascent archaeology in some writings, while dismissing others as naïve or absurd. With this point in mind, this paper discusses the written and material legacies of three 19th Century antiquarians in the north of Scotland who worked on a particular monument type, the broch. The paper explores the degree to which each has been admitted as an influence on the development of the broch as a type. It then proceeds to compare this established typology with the author's experiences, in the field, of the sites it describes. In doing so, the paper addresses wider issues concerning the role of earlier forms of archaeological discourse in the development of present day archaeological classifications of, and of the problems of reconciling such classifications with our experiences of material culture.

CONTEXTUALIZING PALIMPSEST OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN AN URBAN HERITAGE SITE: Case Study of Chahar Bagh, Shiraz - Iran

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Mahmoudi Farahani ◽  
Marzieh Setayesh ◽  
Leila Shokrollahi
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Active Part ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Urban Heritage ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Historical Sites ◽  
A Site ◽  
Historical Centre

A landscape or site, which has been inhabited for long, consists of layers of history. This history is sometimes reserved in forms of small physical remnants, monuments, memorials, names or collective memories of destruction and reconstruction. In this sense, a site/landscape can be presumed as what Derrida refers to as a “palimpsest”. A palimpsest whose character is identified in a duality between the existing layers of meaning accumulated through time, and the act of erasing them to make room for the new to appear. In this study, the spatial collective memory of the Chahar Bagh site which is located in the historical centre of Shiraz will be investigated as a contextualized palimpsest, with various projects adjacent one another; each conceptualized and constructed within various historical settings; while the site as a heritage is still an active part of the city’s cultural life. Through analysing the different layers of meaning corresponding to these adjacent projects, a number of principals for reading the complexities of similar historical sites can be driven.

Case study: Characterization of 19th century candles from maritime archaeological environments with FTIR, NMR, and GC–MS

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 102711
Author(s):  
Lisa Kasprzok ◽  
Stéphanie Boussert ◽  
Johanna Rivera ◽  
Stéphanie Cretté
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century

Unsustainable Capitalism

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-34
Author(s):  
Allan Macinnes
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Culture Change ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Individual

This paper makes an important, interdisciplinary contribution, to the ongoing debate on the transition from clanship to capitalism. Integral to this contribution is the important distinction between capitalism as an individualist ideology and capitalist societies where individualism is a widespread but not necessarily a universal ideology. His concern is not with the bipolar opposition of landlord and people which tends to dominate debates on the land issue in the Highlands. Instead, he focuses on material culture change in relation to landscape organisation, settlement patterns and morphology in order to examine how social relationships were structured during the critical period of estate re-orientation often depicted progressively as Improvement but regressively as clearance through the removal and relocation of population. His case study on Kintyre is particularly valuable. By scrutinising spatial as well as social relationships Dalglish demonstrates that clanship was based as much on daily practices of living as on an patrimonial ideology of kinship, practices which led the House of Argyll to attempt the reinvention of concepts of occupancy in order to emphasise the importance of the individual over the family through partitioned space.

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