The Evolution of the "barbareno" Chumash

During the last 3500 years or so, the Chumash Indians of southern California developed many of the cultural characteristics that have led anthropologists to classify them as one of the most complex hunter­ gatherer societies in history. In recent years, much attention has focused on the Middle-to-Late Period transition (ca. A.D. 1150-1300) as crucial to the evolution of this complexity. I believe the development of Churnash complexity was a long process, the foundations of which were laid much earlier in time. In examining this premise, I focus on Late Holocene archaeological records for the Santa Barbara mainland coast, where Chumash population densities and complexity reached their zenith . About 3500 years ago, a remarkable ceremony took place at a village cemetery at Rincon, a prominent point located between the modern cities of Santa Barbara and Ventura . Here, two young men, probably warriors killed in battle judging from their wounds, were buried with a wealth of goods. According to William Harrison (1964), who excavated portions of this cemetery at CA-SBA-119, the flexed bodies of the men were liberally dusted with red ochre, and surrounded with baskets, stone bowls, atlatis, flake tools, abalone pendants, deer legs, and utilized beach stones. Along with these artifacts, one of the men was also buried with two pebbles encircled with asphalt bands, a grooved stone, a glob of asphaltum with two rows of inset shark teeth, a bird bone tube, a large bone bodkin or point, a stone disk with asphalt around the edge , sandals, and a turtle shell. The second man also had four bone awls (one with an ochre-painted asphalt handle), a dart point, a palette, a quartz crystal, two cakes of red ochre, four eagle claws, two abalone dishes, a bone scraper, a turtle shell containing two cores and 67 whole Olivella shells, and another turtle shell containing four fish gorges and five phalanges from a large bird wing. Also found in the general area was an Olivella grooved rectangle (OGR) bead, a distinctive southern bead type and the only one of its kind known from the Santa Barbara Channel area (see Howard and Raab 1993; Vellanoweth 1995; Jenkins and Erlandson 1996). What is remarkable about CA-SBA-119 is its antiquity, dating to the very end of the Middle Holocene and the beginning of the Late Holocene, between about 3300 to 3700 RYBP (Table 1); its elaboration of material culture and ritual behavior; its evidence for warfare; the context of these associations; and some of the things not found in the cemetery. The context of the finds is a Milling Stone assemblage in which manos and metates outnumber mortars and pestles 10 to 1. Yet, as Harrison (1964:346) recognized, other aspects of the assemblage, from the flexed burials to the elaborate and finely crafted grave offerings, seem typically Canalino (or Chumash). What is miSSing from the assemblage is any evidence for intensified maritime subsistence, no circular shell fishhooks or other specialized marine hunting technology and relatively few fish or sea mammal bones despite Harrison's 1I8-inch screening of the excavated deposits . Yet it is often assumed that the elaborated Canalino pattern is inextricably linked to intensive maritime adaptations. Harrison's discoveries at CA-SBA-119, it seems to me, indicate a relatively great antiquity for some of the foundations of Chumash culture. They also suggest that the economic underpinnings of the high population densities and cultural complexity of California's coastal societies were not strictly maritime, but were based on the high diversity and productivity of both marine and terrestrial resources (see Landberg 1965).