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Explore the remarkable history of one of the jewels of the US
National Park system California's Northern Channel Islands,
sometimes called the American Galapagos and one of the jewels of
the US National Park system, are a located between 20 and 44 km off
the southern California mainland coast. Celebrated as a trip back
in time where tourists can capture glimpses of California prior to
modern development, the islands are often portrayed as frozen
moments in history where ecosystems developed in virtual isolation
for tens of thousands of years. This could not, however, be further
from the truth. For at least 13,000 years, the Chumash and their
ancestors occupied the Northern Channel Islands, leaving behind an
archaeological record that is one of the longest and best preserved
in the Americas. From ephemeral hunting and gathering camps to
densely populated coastal villages and Euro-American and Chinese
historical sites, archaeologists have studied the Channel Island
environments and material culture records for over 100 years. They
have pieced together a fascinating story of initial settlement by
mobile hunter-gatherers to the development of one of the world's
most complex hunter-gatherer societies ever recorded, followed by
the devastating effects of European contact and settlement. Likely
arriving by boat along a "kelp highway," Paleocoastal migrants
found not four offshore islands, but a single super island,
Santarosae. For millennia, the Chumash and their predecessors
survived dramatic changes to their land- and seascapes, climatic
fluctuations, and ever-evolving social and cultural systems.
Islands Through Time is the remarkable story of the human and
ecological history of California's Northern Channel Islands. We
weave the tale of how the Chumash and their ancestors shaped and
were shaped by their island homes. Their story is one of adaptation
to shifting land- and seascapes, growing populations, fluctuating
subsistence resources, and the innovation of new technologies,
subsistence strategies, and socio-political systems. Islands
Through Time demonstrates that to truly understand and preserve the
Channel Islands National Park today, archaeology and deep history
are critically important. The lessons of history can act as a guide
for building sustainable strategies into the future. The resilience
of the Chumash and Channel Island ecosystems provides a story of
hope for a world increasingly threatened by climate change,
declining biodiversity, and geopolitical instability.
Archaeological data now show that relatively intense human
adaptations to coastal environments developed much earlier than
once believed - more than 125,000 years ago. With our oceans and
marine fisheries currently in a state of crisis, coastal
archaeological sites contain a wealth of data that can shed light
on the history of human exploitation of marine ecosystems. In
eleven case studies from the Americas, Pacific Islands, North Sea,
Caribbean, Europe, and Africa, leading researchers working in
coastal areas around the world cover diverse marine ecosystems,
reaching into deep history to discover how humans interacted with
and impacted these aquatic environments and shedding new light on
our understanding of contemporary environmental problems.
For more than ten thousand years, Native Americans from Alaska to
southern California relied on aquatic animals such as seals, sea
lions, and sea otters for food and raw materials. Archaeological
research on the interactions between people and these marine
mammals has made great advances recently and provides a unique lens
for understanding the human and ecological past. Archaeological
research is also emerging as a crucial source of information on
contemporary environmental issues as we improve our understanding
of the ancient abundance, ecology, and natural history of these
species. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary volume brings
together archaeologists, biologists, and other scientists to
consider how archaeology can inform the conservation and management
of pinnipeds and other marine mammals along the Pacific Coast.
Using archaeology as a tool for understanding long-term ecological
and climatic change, this volume synthesizes current knowledge
about the ways Native Americans interacted with their environments
along the Atlantic Coast of North America over the past 10,000
years. Leading scholars discuss how the region's indigenous peoples
grappled with significant changes to shorelines and estuaries, from
sea level rise to shifting plant and animal distributions to
European settlement and urbanization. Together, they provide a
valuable perspective spanning millennia on the diverse marine and
nearshore ecosystems of the entire Eastern Seaboard-the icy waters
of Newfoundland and the Gulf of Maine, the Middle Atlantic regions
of the New York Bight and the Chesapeake Bay, and the warm shallows
of the St. Johns River and the Florida Keys. This broad comparative
outlook brings together populations and areas previously studied in
isolation. Today, the Atlantic Coast is home to tens of millions of
people who inhabit ecosystems that are in dramatic decline. The
research in this volume not only illuminates the past, but also
provides important tools for managing coastal environments into an
uncertain future. A volume in the series Society and Ecology in
Island and Coastal Archaeology, edited by Victor D. Thompson
California's northern Channel Islands have one of the longest and
best-preserved archaeological records in the Americas, spanning
some 13,000 calendar years. When European explorers first travelled
to the area, these islands were inhabited by the Chumash, some of
the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers known.
Chumash society was characterised by hereditary leaders,
sophisticated exchange networks and interaction spheres, and
diverse maritime economies. Focusing on the archaeology of five
sites dated to the last 3,000 years, this book examines the
archaeology and historical ecology of San Miguel Island, the
westernmost and most isolated of the northern Channel Islands.
Detailed faunal, artefact, and other data are woven together in a
diachronic analysis that investigates the interplay of social and
ecological developments on this unique island. The first to focus
solely on San Miguel Island archaeology, this book examines issues
ranging from coastal adaptations to emergent cultural complexity to
historical ecology and human impacts on ancient environments.
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