On Santa Rosa Island, 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 known settlers of North America’s 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 America’s earliest settlers moved south from Alaska along the coast, rather than farther inland, where retreating glaciers are thought to have allowed passage to the continent’s interior.
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 island’s 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, Rick’s team turned to Santa Rosa Island to survey its previously unexplored southwestern coast.
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.
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. 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. 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.
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.
“As excited about these finds as we are, to us they inspire more work.”
For more, see westerndigs.org and
Journal of Field Archaeology, Volume 38 Issue 4 (Nov 2013), "Archaeological survey, paleogeography, and the search for Late Pleistocene Paleocoastal peoples of Santa Rosa Island, California," Torben C Rick; Jon M Erlandson; Nicholas P Jew; Leslie A Reeder-Myers.
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