Myths of an Island Chiefdom: Super Chert and Golden Acorns

Fauvelle, Mikael

doi:10.1179/cal.2012.4.1.149

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Recovery and processing of soil samples for flotation is not yet routine (Gamble 2008). A recent exchange in a California journal hammers home the point that our attention to and analyses of extraordinarily important foods such as acorns are just starting to appear on the radar screen in southern California (Arnold 2012;Fauvelle 2012Fauvelle ,2013.…”

Section: Reconstructing Plant Use Through Macrobotanical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many archival sources refer to cross-channel movements of food plants, but establishing a reliable material record of such movements is a challenge (Arnold 2012;Fauvelle 2012). Acorn is perhaps the most important case.…”

Section: Acorns In the Archaeological Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But in part because the conversion of acorns into palatable food requires several steps, including shelling, crushing, grinding, and leaching (Basgall 1987;Baumhoff 1963;Blackburn 1975:243;Heizer and Elsasser 1980:93), and shelling was probably often done at off-site loci, the odds of carbonized acorn shells-even local ones-appearing with significant ubiquity values in paleobotanical assemblages are greatly diminished. And for acorns that were shipped from the mainland to the islands, it is not clear whether they were moved in the shell, shelled but whole, or pulverized (Arnold 2012;Fauvelle 2012Fauvelle ,2013.…”

Section: Acorns In the Archaeological Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Botanical Evidence of Paleodietary and Environmental Change: Drought on the Channel Islands, California

Arnold¹,

Martin²

2014

Am. antiq.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Fluctuations in climatic regimes and biodiversity through time are linked in complex ways to human behavior and socioeconomic processes. We use macrobotanical evidence from Chumash village sites on California’s Channel Islands to investigate the relationship between late Holocene climatic perturbations and one region of the larger Chumash world. Carbonized plant remains provide evidence of the shifting availability of native plants during the Transitional period (A.D. 1150–1300), when droughts impacted island floral diversity and the Chumash had to cope with changes in vegetation regimes that likely curtailed food availability. We find that drought-resistant plant resources appear in higher relative frequencies in proveniences dating to the Transitional era, and at least one food resource was first imported from the mainland around that time. These findings support the proposition that the Chumash intensified cross-channel trade in part to respond to dietary needs during episodic resource stress. This is also the time when several economic specializations blossomed, including intensive shell bead making. These specializations persisted for six centuries and were central to the development of institutionalized leadership and political complexity in the region ca. A.D. 1200. Various strategies to preserve stability in the plant diet were important elements in the broader reorganization of labor in coastal southern California.

show abstract

Section: Reconstructing Plant Use Through Macrobotanical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Acorns In the Archaeological Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Acorns In the Archaeological Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Botanical Evidence of Paleodietary and Environmental Change: Drought on the Channel Islands, California

Arnold¹,

Martin²

2014

Am. antiq.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As can be seen in Table 1, the caloric value of sea-purslane seeds is relatively low: about 25 percent less than that of acorns. This means that they would have raised the same transport efficiency issues that have been reported for other, more calorically valuable nuts and seeds (Fauvelle 2011, 2013). The overwhelming majority of the calories from the sea-purslane plant would be found in its greens, which contain only 21 calories per gram but make up 99.87 percent of the plant by weight (compared to .13 percent for seeds).…”

Section: Western Sea-purslanementioning

confidence: 75%

“…There has been a lot of debate recently regarding the role of plant foods in cross-channel Chumash exchange systems (Arnold 2012; Arnold and Martin 2014; Fauvelle 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014; Gill and Erlandson 2014). Much of this discussion stems from the importance of these exchange systems in models of the development of Chumash social and political complexity (e.g., King 1976).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate Change and Subsistence Exchange in Southern California: Was Western Sea-Purslane a Channel Island Trade Good?

Fauvelle¹,

Esch²,

Somerville³

2017

Am. Antiq.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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 for Sesuvium verrucosum and 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.

show abstract

Asphaltum (bitumen) production in everyday life on the California Channel Islands

Brown

2016

Journal of Anthropological Archaeology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Myths of an Island Chiefdom: Super Chert and Golden Acorns

Cited by 8 publications

References 1 publication

Botanical Evidence of Paleodietary and Environmental Change: Drought on the Channel Islands, California

Botanical Evidence of Paleodietary and Environmental Change: Drought on the Channel Islands, California

Climate Change and Subsistence Exchange in Southern California: Was Western Sea-Purslane a Channel Island Trade Good?

Asphaltum (bitumen) production in everyday life on the California Channel Islands

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About