Purisimeno Chumash Prehistory: Maritime Adaptations Along the Southern California Coast. Michael A. Glassow. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996, xiv + 170 pp., 27 figs., 3 tables, $25.00 (paper).

My primary points are that paleoenvironmental causes for apparent transitions are not considered in Hildebrandt's model, and that estuaries like Elkhorn Slough were most important not for their winter foods, but for their summer fisheries. To make these points, I reinterpret the relatively shallow cultural chronology employed by Hildebrandt and Mikkelson (1993) in the southern Santa Clara Valley, raise some concerns about sampling strategies appropriate for the characterization of wetland adaptations, and question whether die vertebrate faunal data reported by Hildebrandt truly reflect lacustrine intensification.

The Archaeological Survey Manual Gregory G. White and Thomas F. King Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press Inc., 2007,188 pp., extensively illustrated, bibliography, 4 appendices, index, $29.95 (paperback), $69.00 (hardback).

In this paper we have focused on the northern Santa Lucia Range, where archaeological surveys and excavations, completed during the last decade, provide on-the-ground validation of settlements and cultural features suggested in the Harrington notes and records.

Recognition of this earlier occupational component has significant implications for regional settlement histories and cultural chronology. Subsequent treatments of central coast culture history (Jones and Hylkema 1988; Jones et al. 1989) have relied heavily upon data from this location to define the Middle Period. Recent discussion of early Holocene settlement along the central California coast has been forced, following the original conclusions on the dating of CA-MNT-229, to interpret an apparent absence of early coastal sites in the Monterey Bay area (Breschini and Haversat 1991a: 125 - 132). Breschini and Haversat suggested that this absence may be attributed either to sea-level rise (1991a: 127) or to the ruggedness of the Monterey Bay shoreline relative to more habitable inland terrain (1991a: 131). The early component now recognized at CA-MNT-229 supports recent findings from CA-SON-348/H (Schwaderer et al. 1990; Schwaderer 1992) and other sites, where the antiquity of human presence in the coastal zone of central California has been found to be substantially older than suggested by the corpus of previously available data. Since the original interpretation of the chronology of CA-MNT-229 has been questioned elsewhere (Jones and Hildebrandt 1990:73; Bouey and Basgall 1991:52), this paper is simply intended to set the record straight and present a revised assessment of the dating of this important site. The following discussion emphasizes those aspects of the excavation that bear on the dating of the site—radiocarbon, obsidian hydration, shell and glass beads, and flaked and ground stone artifacts. Descriptions of the rest of the material inventory recovered from this location are included in the original site reports (Dondero 1984; Dietz et al. 1986, 1988).

Reports on excavations at Little Pico Creek in San Luis Obispo County and assesses the temporal components and issues of cultural chronology, subsistence, mobility, and social structure.

Series: Perspectives in California Archaeology 3

As the focus of intense debate concerning the possible effects of environmental variability on Native populations, the Middle-Late Transition (MLT) is an exceptionally important period in California prehistory. Recent salvage excavations at the Coon Creek Site (CA-SLO-9) on the San Luis Obispo County coast revealed a single, highly discrete component dating cal A.D. 900-1300 which is largely synchronous with most definitions of the MLT. With a recovery volume of 23.2 cubic meters, this is the first component to yield artifact and faunal assemblages substantive enough to establish the culture historical markers for this period in this region, and to define corresponding subsistence and technological patterns. Artifacts from a proposed Coon Creek Phase show a blend of Middle and Late Period cultural traits (with a heavier contribution from the former) as well as some unique MLT diagnostics Faunal remains suggest a landscape in which foragers exploited robust invertebrate populations, cormorants, sea otters, and rabbits, and "de-intensified" their fishing practices, all of which imply an organization of labor different from that of previous periods.

For nearly half a century, the Milling Stone Horizon has been recognized as an integral element of California culture history, but representative components have long been thought to be restricted to the southern portion of the state. Claims to the contrary by D. L. True and a few of his students for the presence of Milling Stone Horizon manifestations further north have not been fully embraced due to inadequate dating and poor component resolution. In this article, we reassess the previously scanty evidence for a Milling Stone Horizon presence in northern California, and review data from nine recently investigated sites that have yielded strong evidence for the Milling Stone Culture in Early-Middle Holocene contexts north of southern California.