An Early Complex in San Diego County, California

It is often assumed that use-surfaces on informal or expedient milling tools were formed strictly through use. Informal or expedient milling tools lack clear evidence of exterior shaping and are often associated with short-term occupations or temporary, task-specific sites. Here, a simple model of technological intensification outlined in Bettinger et al. (2006) is adapted to predict minimum use times necessary to profit from time spent improving the use-surface of milling tools. The costs and benefits of making and using improved milling surfaces for two types of raw material (sandstone and granite) are compared using experimentally derived estimates of grinding rates and manufacturing costs. Experiments indicate that shaping a milling surface increases seed-grinding efficiency. Modeling these data along with manufacturing costs predicts that manufacturing effort should be expected sooner than often assumed—in fact, little more than one and a half hours of seed grinding are necessary to profit from time spent manufacturing a shallow basin in sandstone . It also predicts that sandstone should be selected over granite for short-term seed grinding due to its ease of shaping. These results imply that there are many cases where mobile hunter–gatherers who processed seed resources could have reduced their overall handling time by selecting certain materials and investing time in shaping milling surfaces. This highlights the need for greater attention to physical evidence of manufacturing among expedient milling tools. Documenting raw material selection and degree of manufacturing effort expended on such tools can increase the visibility of gendered economic decisions among prehistoric hunter–gatherers. • Costs and benefits of making milling surfaces are modeled with experimental data. • Results run counter to widespread assumptions about expedient milling tools. • Relatively short use-times are needed to profit from time spent shaping surfaces. • Time spent shaping milling surfaces can reduce handling times for wild seeds.

Excavations at site U.C.L.J.-M-15 at Agua Hedionda Lagoon in southern California have provided a radiocarbon date of 7070 B.C. for a transitional phase between the San Dieguito and the La Jolla complex. The many radiocarbon dates taken from sites in San Diego County demonstrate a somewhat greater age than was hitherto generally expected for the three cultures in the area. The age of the most recent culture, the Yuman-Diegueno, has been extended to about 1000 B.C. The La Jolla shows an extremely long period of occupation spanning roughly 1000 B.C. to 7070 B.C. The third group, the San Dieguito, a pre-Desert culture, is still undated. Samples are now in process and should, judged from the new La Jolla dates, give a date earlier than 7000 B.C. for the earliest phases of the San Dieguito.

► Ground stone milling tools were integral to economic and social transformations in central California prehistory. ► Synchronic and diachronic variability exists among mortuary associated ground stone artifacts. ► Archaeological and ethnographic evidence supports the association of certain mortars with feasting and ritual activities. ► Changes in the status of women and men, and roles in community ritual and politics are explored. ► Ground stone tools offer an important and often overlooked source of data for considering social changes in prehistory. The archaeological record of central California contains a rich variety of ground stone milling tools—from highly expedient cobble tools to large ornate mortars and finely finished pestles more than half a meter in length. Historical trends in research objectives, along with assumptions about the entirely mundane character of ground stone tools, have caused much of the variability and many “extra-utilitarian” aspects of these artifacts to be overlooked. This study analyzed grave-associated ground stone from the southern San Francisco Bay Area and employed use-wear analysis (macroscopic and microscopic) and morphological comparisons to investigate potential distinctions in form, manufacturing effort, use, and association over approximately 6000 years of prehistory. Ground stone morphologies, patterns of use-wear, and the way that ground stone was interred with people changed between the earliest and the latest periods analyzed in this study. During the Late Holocene, ground stone underwent a diversification of form and perhaps purpose. An overtly symbolic dimension associated with mortars and pestles seems to emerge with the addition of highly formalized and expensive flower-pot mortars, very long shaped pestles, and additional embellishments such as shell bead appliqué and painted designs. Large, costly, highly formalized, and embellished mortars exist alongside smaller, less costly, less formalized milling tools. Archaeological and ethnographic evidence supports the inferred association of certain mortars with feasting and ritual activities. Differences in the representation of some of these forms in male and female graves may reflect changes in the roles of women and men in community ritual and politics.

During 1963 and 1964 the La Jolla Radiocarbon Laboratory continued to follow essentially the same techniques as in previous years. The three counters described in La Jolla III have continued to yield measurements in virtually complete agreement. As before, we add, except for the measurements of apparent age on organisms collected alive (see below), ca. 100 yr to the one-sigma statistical counting error. Dates are still computed on the basis of the half-life estimate of 5570 yr.

Recent excavations at the Cross Creek site (CA-SLO-1797) on the central coast of California revealed a stratigraphically discrete midden component dating between ca. 8350 and 7700 cal B.C., making it the oldest mainland shell midden on the west coast of North America. A large recovery volume revealed an assemblage dominated by grinding implements (handstones and milling slabs) and crude core and flake tools typical of California's Milling Stone horizon, but the Cross Creek findings extend the antiquity of Milling Stone back to the terminal Pleistocene. The tools and associated faunal remains suggest a gathering economy profoundly different from the terminal Pleistocene big-game hunting of interior North America. This variation is difficult to reconcile as a simple adaptive outgrowth from late Pleistocene hunting and may reflect a separate coastal migration route into the New World.

Against a backdrop of sustained resource intensification and population increases that began at the end of the middle Holocene in California and continued until at least 1000 B.P., there is a variety of archaeological evidence indicating that hunting of highly ranked large mammals actually increased during this time. This trend runs counter to general expectations set forth by optimal-foraging and diet-breadth models, and suggests that the role of big-game procurement by logistically organized male hunting parties had important social—indeed evolutionary—implications apart from its contributions to simple group provisioning. At the core of this argument is the notion that there can be Darwinian fitness benefits for males in pursuing certain types of highly prized resources, at the expense of regular and dependable provisioning of one's family. We contend that the evolutionary legacy surrounding big-game hunting is fundamental to the understanding not only of its paradoxical energetics, but also of the general elaboration of cultural systems, including the rise of certain spectacular technological and artistic traditions that characterize the California Middle Archaic period.

Although data collection and analysis are far from complete, initial results suggest that there is significant patterning in the artifact distributions thus far compiled. As a tentative hypothesis, therefore, it is proposed that in the extant artifact distributions there is evidence for a hierarchical use of space related to: (1) terrain; (2) distance from primary water sources; and (3) probable locational differentials in the kinds and quantities of subsistence resources available for exploitation.

Author(s): True, D. L; Beemer, Eleanor | Abstract: The purpose of the present paper is to add to the existing data base two previously undescribed Pauma Complex artifact inventories. We recognize that our presentation is descriptive and contains no recognizable research design. It has no list or discussion of local plants, no discussion of regional rainfall figures, and no significant comments on the local geology. These omissions are not accidental. While we recognize the need for such information under some circumstances, and are fully cognizant of the many unresolved local theoretical issues, it is our opinion that such matters are best developed in other contexts, and when dealing with substantially larger artifact samples.

The immediate goal is to present here some data relative to one aspect of the little known San Luis Rey I phase of the San Luis Rey Complex. We are not proposing a synthesis of all available San Luis Rey I data for San Diego County nor are we suggesting that the handful of artifacts described herein is a sufficient basis for any in-depth discussion of either the settlement pattern or the specific activities of site occupants. We have included, however several theoretically oriented observations that are best seen as tentative hypotheses. In our opinion these suggestions, though not yet testable, are not inconsistent with the available data and may have meaningful implications in the eventual understanding of the local archaeology. It is hoped that more significant data and somewhat more definitive theoretical contributions will be forthcoming as the data base is expanded and refined. Continuing investigations toward this end are now in progress.