Under the supervision of Dr. Diane P. Gifford-Gonzalez, Charlotte Sunseri will explore the nature of prehistoric economic systems and trade relationships among hunter-gatherers of the greater Monterey Bay area of California. This project will synthesize archaeological data from Cultural Resource Management investigations at 55 sites in a 115 km x 65 km transect from the Monterey Bay inland to the Santa Clara Valley and produce original analyses of animal bones and stone tools from three major residential sites in this zone. These data will elucidate social and ecological aspects of economic decisions (e.g. trading partner selection and commodity production), expressions of territoriality over resources, specialization of goods, and wealth accumulation by individuals. Since these sites date to the Middle Period (600 BC-AD 1000) through Middle-Late Transition (AD 1000-1250), the material signatures from the onset of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (AD 800-1400) allow this project to monitor initial responses of precontact Californian populations to environmental stress. Methods of this project include: analysis of food remains and evidence for pelt or leather production, direct radiocarbon dating of faunal remains and shell beads for temporal control of economic decisions, source determination of shell beads and obsidian as potential exotic materials, and analysis of the spatial patterns of trade items and resource use. Spatial analysis of the distribution of different material types throughout the region will help elucidate who was involved in trade relationships (elites versus non-elites), how the exchange was facilitated (e.g. central place exchange, redistribution, etc.), and which materials were prestige goods or wealth items.
This project tests long-standing hypotheses of economic strategies among middle range, hunter-gatherer societies living in environmentally unpredictable contexts. In this way, it addresses one of the enduring stereotypes of California, the Myth of Paradise, by suggesting that this region did not always have stable and comfortable climatic conditions, but rather may have had stressful climatic events that had significant impacts on culture change. The intellectual merit of this research lies in its contribution to substantive syntheses of archaeological knowledge of the greater Monterey Bay area, and theoretical approaches to understanding processes which initiated and maintained exchange in prehistory. It will produce GIS-based datasets of settlement patterns, resource distributions, and trade networks, which will be disseminated to California archaeologists as an online resource. Beyond the datasets and conclusions produced in this project, it broadly impacts the education of archaeology undergraduates at UC-Santa Cruz. The project provides one-to-one, intensive training to undergraduates in laboratory methods and data interpretation. This hands-on analysis experience supplements classroom knowledge and contributes to the management and dissemination of archaeological information through the role of UC-Santa Cruz as a regional archive of archaeological data.
