The significance of prehistoric coastal adaptations in California has been recognized for more than a century, going back at least to Max Uhle's 1902 excavations at the Emeryville shell mound and the 1875 excavations by H. C. Yarrow at Mescalitan Island, in the Goleta Slough, west of Santa Barbara. In the 1920s, David Banks Rogers, curator of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, conducted investigations that led to Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast (1929), the museum's first monograph. The museum has now published another volume summarizing recent archaeological and ethnohistoric insights into the people who lived on the edge of the Goleta estuary, based on papers originally presented at the 2004 conference of the Society for California Archaeology.
In the introduction, Michael A. Glassow summarizes the history and major themes of archaeological research in the area. Investigations since the 1960s have been conducted primarily for cultural resource management (CRM) projects mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and relevant federal law. These projects have explored issues regarding (1) environmental change and subsistence patterns, (2) acquisition of food resources (principally faunal resources), (3) the positions of the Goleta settlements within larger networks spanning mainland areas and the Channel Islands, and (4) shifts in prehistoric technologies.
Goleta was one of the most densely inhabited areas of Native California, with an estimated 2,000 residents when the Gaspar de Portolá expedition visited in 1769, as John Johnson notes in his chapter. There were four villages, the largest of which was S'axpilil. Lynn Gamble argues that there were as many as 600–800 residents at Helo’, and densely packed houses across an area of 35 ha. From studying mission registers, Johnson argues for the importance of S'axpilil in patterns of intermarriage and kinship connections with other coastal, interior, and island communities. Gamble argues that residents of Helo’ similarly intermarried—despite the prevalence of “endogamous” marriages between residents of Helo’ (p. 56)—creating “a network of political coalitions that the elite from Helo’ and other centers perpetuated” (p. 58).
This volume represents a deep dive into the gray literature, and the authors summarize complex and often uncoordinated investigations conducted by different investigators for diverse purposes. David Stone discusses projects at CA-SBa-58, a multicomponent site with Early Period occupational levels between 5231 and 1440 cal BC, a brief Middle Period occupation of cal AD 187 and cal AD 391, and a Late Period occupation between cal AD 1352 and cal AD 1748. Despite this chronological depth, Stone argues that the potential for reconstructing occupational history at CA-SBa-58 has not been fully realized because of the absence of an overarching strategy to integrate the results of CRM investigations, a problem partially addressed by the development of cohesive regional research questions and 1993 amendments to CEQA.
Clay Lebow is lead author of two chapters, one about Middle and Late Period occupations at CA-SBa-59 and another summarizing subsistence patterns at the much-impacted CA-SBa-48, where Early and Late Period components are recognized. Faunal remains indicate an emphasis on resources readily available from the Goleta Slough—shellfish and fish—complemented by coastal hunting of sea mammals but not exchange with Channel Islands groups. Excavations at CA-SBS-59 demonstrate a substantial residential occupation between 1910 and 1025 BC followed by a short-term campsite dating sometime between AD 920 and 1490.
William Hildebrandt and colleagues consider changes in environment and subsistence, especially with reference to complex developments of sea-level rise and formation of estuarine habitats. They have compiled calibrated and reservoir-corrected radiocarbon dates for Goleta region, and they document shifts from outer coast to estuarine species of shellfish. They reconstruct bathymetric profiles of Goleta Slough, Tecolote Canyon, and Gaviota Canyon, relating them to patterns of sea-level rise, and conclude that a paleoestuary developed at Gaviota 1,500 m south of the modern shoreline after approximately 9000 cal BP, that another paleoestuary formed near Goleta 1,200 m south of the modern coastline after approximately 8000 cal BP, but that no paleoestuary formed off the coast at Tecolote.
Jon Erlandson and colleagues discuss CA-SBA-56, a large midden and residential site located on the northern margin of the Goleta Slough. Originally dating to approximately 7,500–7,000 years ago, the site was a substantial village with an extensive assemblage of manos, metates, and other stone artifacts corresponding to the Milling Stone Horizon as defined by Rogers (1929). Although there have been several investigations of CA-SBA-56, Erlandson and colleagues note that the site has not contributed as much as it could to our knowledge of Chumash prehistory.
This volume reflects the potential and problems of CRM, particularly in areas like Goleta Slough that have multiple landowners, different legal requirements, and often very piecemeal investigations. On the one hand, much of the information summarized in this volume would not exist without CEQA and similar legal requirements. The sites would have been destroyed and probably never studied. On the other hand, much of the unevenness in archaeological data results from the fragmented and often underfunded, underanalyzed, and underreported CRM projects. For example, it is disheartening to read about a 1979 project at CA-SBA-58: excavated deposits were “selectively screened,” no maps or documentation of excavation units exist, and no “laboratory analyses nor descriptions of findings were reported” for “these CEQA-mandated efforts” (p. 193). In sum, Goleta Slough Prehistory is not only a valuable summary of archaeological insights but a sobering commentary on archaeological practice.
