In this paper, I present the results of a recent radiocarbon study designed to test and refine King's proposed chronology for CA-SBA-1.

Test excavations at a small rock shelter near Otter Point on San Miguel Island produced an assemblage of well-preserved artifacts and faunal remains from buried midden deposits dated to approximately 6600 years ago. Along with an unusual assemblage of 40 Dentalium shell artifacts, faunal remains from Otter Cave (CA-SMI-605) provide valuable information on the nature of San Miguel Island environments and the adaptations of its maritime peoples during the early Middle Holocene. Here we summarize the context, chronology, nature, and implications of the Otter Cave materials. Shellfish from rocky intertidal habitats (turban snails, mussels, owl limpets, etc.) dominate the faunal assemblage, but fishing and marine mammal hunting also contributed to the subsistence of the cave occupants. We also discuss the Otter Cave data in the context of a long sequence of shell midden strata at Otter Point that span much of the past 7500 years, as well as general models for the evolution of maritime adaptations in the Santa Barbara Channel region.

The rich archaeological record of San Miguel Island has attracted the attention of antiquarians, archaeologists, and relic collectors for over 100 years (Schumacher 1875; Glassow 1977), partly because severe erosion caused by overgrazing and sea cliff retreat has exposed the contents of many sites.

Focusing on the Chumash, we examine the potential impacts of Old World epidemic diseases on protohistoric peoples of the southern California coast. Our study indicates that: (1) coastal peoples would have been highly susceptible to Old World disease epidemics; (2) native contacts with several sixteenth and seventeenth century European maritime expeditions were extensive; and (3) Old World diseases also were closing in on protohistoric California from the Southwest, Mexico, and Baja California. There is little clear evidence that Old World diseases devastated California's coastal tribes in the protohistoric period, but archaeologists have invested little energy searching for such evidence. We propose three models of protohistoric disease impacts to be tested with archaeological data, examine some problems in identifying protohistoric archaeological components along the California coast, and outline some archaeological patterns that might be linked to disease epidemics and associated cultural changes.

CA-SBI-12, a small archaeological site occupied between about A.D. 1180 and 1390, is one of only two recorded archaeological sites on the south coast of Santa Barbara Island. A relatively limited faunal and artifact assemblage, consisting primarily of black abalone and owl limpet, with small amounts of fish, bird, and mammal remains, suggests that the site was a temporary or seasonal camp. Occupation of CASBI- 12 was brief and specialized, but data from other Santa Barbara Island sites suggest that the island was used for a variety of activities, including shellfish collecting, sea mammal hunting, fishing, and the production of ground and chipped stone tools for at least the last 4,400 years.

Few scholars have accepted the evidence presented so far for associations between humans and mammoths, but Orr described a number of other intriguing early sites that may place humans on Santa Rosa Island by the terminal Pleistocene. For several years, we have been studying these and other early Santa Rosa Island sites. We have yet to find evidence for a Pleistocene occupation of the island (Erlandson and Morris 1992), but several early Holocene sites offer evidence for the settlement of the island prior to 8,000 years ago (Erlandson 1992). One of these is an isolated human burial at CA-SRI-116, a large shell midden located near the mouth of Lobo Canyon on the northeast coast of the island (Fig. 1). In this paper, we report on a suite of radiocarbon dates for CA-SRI-116 and describe the available data on the stratigraphic context of the burial, its position, and its artifact associations.

In this short paper we describe a crescent fragment recently found at a site on San Miguel Island. Crescents are important terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene time markers in California and the Great Basin, but knowledge about their distribution, chronology, and function is limited by incomplete reporting of their occurrences in the published literature. Although several crescents were found on the Channel Islands by antiquarians or early archaeologists, very few have come from known sites or specific contexts The crescent from CA-SMI-681 comes from an upland lithic scatter, a context that supports a utilitarian function associated with the manufacturing, use, and maintenance of points and related hunting equipment The crescent adds to the evidence for a substantial presence of Paleocoastal peoples on San Miguel and the other northern Channel Islands.