Dissertation Improvement Grant: Social Space and Community Interaction in Late Holocene Coastal California: Archaeological Perspectives from the Northern Channel Islands

在约翰·埃兰森博士的指导下，托本·里克将为他的博士论文研究收集数据，挖掘加州北海峡群岛上的五个考古遗址，这些遗址的历史可以确定为过去的4000年。南加州海岸和海峡群岛的土著居民是世界上人口最多、文化最复杂的狩猎采集者之一。在历史时期，该地区的丘马什人和通瓦人居住在大村庄或城镇，有些居民多达1000人，有等级社会政治组织，并使用贝壳钱购买各种商品和服务。北海峡群岛还包含了北美最早的海洋民族的证据，以及跨越过去12000年的沿海狩猎采集者的惊人记录。这种连续的考古序列，以及保存完好的海峡群岛考古遗址，为研究狩猎采集者文化复杂性的演变提供了一个独特的机会，具有很大的时间深度和相对较高的精度。将进行研究的考古遗址是保存非常完好的村庄，那里有密集的贝类、鱼类和海洋哺乳动物的骨头，各种各样的人工制品，其中三个遗址还包含圆形洼地，这些洼地是房屋结构的遗迹。这些遗址为记录该地区沿海人民社区和家庭生活的各个方面提供了重要的实验室。对这些村庄的挖掘和测绘将为评估丘马什社会的演变提供一种手段，特别关注社区和家庭如何构建和维持等级制的社会政治组织。这个项目将增加我们对社区和家庭考古学、海洋适应性、复杂狩猎采集者的进化以及环境和文化变化之间关系的理解。最终，收集到的数据将增强我们对等级制度、社会不平等以及人类行为中其他高度重要的进化变化背后的因果机制的理解。

Under the direction of Dr. Jon Erlandson, MS Torben Rick will collect data for his doctoral dissertation research, excavating five archaeological sites on California's Northern Channel Islands that date within the last 4,000 years. Native peoples of the southern California Coast and Channel Islands were among the most populous and culturally complex hunter-gatherers in the world. During the historic era, Chumash and Tongva peoples in the region lived in large villages or towns, some with as many as 1,000 residents, had hierarchical sociopolitical organization, and used shell bead money to purchase a variety of goods and services. The Northern Channel Islands also contain the earliest evidence of maritime peoples in North America and a spectacular record of coastal hunter-gatherers that spans the last 12,000 years. This continuous archaeological sequence, along with the excellent preservation of Channel Islands archaeological sites, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the evolution of cultural complexity among hunter-gatherers with great time depth and relatively high precision. The archaeological sites where research will be conducted are extremely well preserved villages that contain dense accumulations of shellfish, fish and sea mammal bones, a variety of artifacts, and three of the sites also contain circular depressions that are the remains of house structures. These sites provide an important laboratory for documenting aspects of community and household life among coastal peoples in the region. Excavation and mapping of these villages will provide a means to assess the evolution of Chumash society, with a specific focus on how communities and households structured and maintained hierarchical sociopolitical organization. This project will increase our understanding of community and household archaeology, maritime adaptations, the evolution of complex hunter-gatherers, and the relationships between environmental and cultural changes. Ultimately, the data gathered will enhance our understanding of the causal mechanisms behind the development of hierarchy, social inequality, and other highly significant evolutionary changes in human behavior.