With National Science Foundation support Dr. Brian Byrd and his colleagues will conduct two seasons of archaeological and paleonenvironmental research in the San Elijo Reserve County Park situated 20 miles north of San Diego in one of the regions largest and best preserved coastal wetlands. The rich natural resources include tidal channels and mud flats, six plant communities and a wide range of vertebrates, invertebrates and bird species. A pilot program of sediment coring which permits reconstruction of past environments indicates estuary deposits dating back to almost 8000 years ago. Archeological research has revealed a rich archaeological heritage in this region and although many sites which lie outside the san Elijo Reserve have been destroyed by urban development, sixteen prehistoric shell midden sites recorded within the park document occupation in almost every millennium from almost 8,000 to 900 years ago. The goal of Dr. Byrd's research is to build up a comprehensive picture of environmental change within this wetland over an eight millennium period, and plot against this changing human settlement patterns and subsistence strategies over time. During the first year of the project independent environmental data will be collected and test excavations will be conducted at 12 shell midden sites to refine occupation time ranges and determine which sites can provide the richest sources of subsistence data. In a second phase, large-scale excavation will be conducted at appropriate sites. Special emphasis will be placed on the collection of large representative samples of animal, plant and shell remains to reconstruct foraging patterns. Preliminary data indicates that over time resource rich estuaries gradually became silted up and impoverished as sea level rose. Formerly aggregated human populations remained in the region but spread more thinly over the landscape to make use of foods more costly in effort and more difficult to procure. Against this background the research team will flesh out the tentative archaeological record and use the data collected to test a variety of theories derived from optimum foraging theory. From this theoretical base a number of predictions can be made and these center on the most energy efficient approaches to resource utilization. They suggest how, in the face of decreasing resources, people can most effectively move between and utilize food patches and how the breadth of their diet may change.
In recent years archaeologists have come to realize that resource rich coastal regions provided an important niche for hunting and gathering peoples and that in such areas in many parts of the world, relatively sedentary societies emerged. This research will shed new light on how such coastal dwellers responded to often rapid and extreme environmental change and the basic strategies they employed. The project will be conducted in the context of a summer field school which includes 14 to 16 students and thus will also serve a valuable educational function.
