Despite considerable differences in plant communities across western California, the region’s hunter-gatherers often have been viewed as having a broadly similar plant resource orientation. The paper re-assesses this perspective by explicitly examining spatial and temporal variation in plant use west of the Sierra Nevada. In doing so, the study capitalizes on a growing body of paleoethnobotanical data to explore similarities and differences in plant food resource emphasis across six main regions in western California. Discussion emphasizes trends in the relative reliance on exploited resources, focusing on three main plant food groups—seeds, nuts, and geophytes—the ‘Sister Trilogy of California.’ The results provide an archaeological baseline to explore to what degree observed spatio-temporal patterns in plant use are primarily a function of resource distribution and density, and in what contexts social factors (such as investment in labor, risk assessment, population density, settlement organization, and cultural preference) play a more prominent role.

Food is one of the most tangible, persistent, and engrained elements of cultural behavior in any given society, past or present. Subsistence systems in California have been greatly elucidated in the past two decades through the study of the continually expanding archaeobotanical record. This special section of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology (Volume 36, Nos. 1 and 2) situates paleoethnobotany in California by highlighting the research currently being conducted by scholars working in various coastal, island, and inland settings in the state. The California archaeobotanical record offers signi cant insights into the evolution of intensive plant exploitation by sedentary hunter-gatherers who maximized their use of a well-endowed but highly diverse environment. The breadth of papers presented here demonstrates the range of research issues that have been addressed using California archaeobotanical data, and suggests what that record might contribute to the resolution of archaeological problems in similar contexts elsewhere.

Using a robust data set from a series of Native American sites in the Los Angeles Basin, we explore whether these coastal settlements are best characterized as representing maritime or littoral adaptations. In doing so, we examine the range of food exploited, while focusing attention on the relative role of fish, marine mammals, and terrestrial mammals in these subsistence economies. We conclude that the uniformly low exploitation of marine mammals and fish—and deep sea fish in particular—in this coastal southern California setting and many others south of Malibu is due in large part to the rich terrestrial and littoral resources of the area. As such, these more readily available foods were consistently favored over the higher risk and labor investment strategy that typifies exploitation of offshore resources. We conclude with a broader consideration of differences and similarities between Los Angeles Basin adaptations and those in other settings within southern California.