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Prospects in California Prehistory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

A. L. Kroeber
A. L. Kroeber*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, California
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Extract

Archaeology in the California area has been notoriously slow to recover cultural sequences. In part this is due to most of the earlier explorations having been conducted without sense of genuine scientific problem, as in the first stages of work in so many other regions. But in even larger measure the delay in discovering positive time changes is the result of difficulties inherent in the archaeological data of the area. Mostly there is no pottery at all. The historic cultures being simple, their artifact inventory is fairly limited and lacking in specialized types. Except in the Santa Barbara region, the numerical yield of specimen data is low for volume of soil moved. The San Francisco Bay mounds, for instance, tend to furnish only about one artifact, whole or broken, per cubic yard dug. This is probably not far from the average productivity the state over, the Santa Barbara coast and islands alone omitted.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1936 , pp. 108 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1936

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References

Works Referred To

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Other Publications

Walker, W. M., Excavating Ancient Yokuts Shellmounds in California. Explors. and Field Work of the Smithsonian Instit. in 1934, p. 73, Washington, 1935.Google Scholar
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