Pueblo ethnographies are often used as sources of analogy in research dealing with prehistoric sociopolitical organization in the American Southwest. By relying on this implicit use of the direct historical approach, the organizational complexity of some prehistoric groups has been underestimated. It is suggested that the selection of ethnographic analogues be based on the question being asked by a researcher, rather than the cultural affiliation of the prehistoric group being studied. This paper focuses on the use of an alternative source of ethnographic information-the historic (1876-1906) Mormon occupation of the Upper Little Colorado region, East-Central Arizona. Information on Mormon subsistence-settlement systems is used to evaluate several assumptions of a commonly used environmental model that attempts to explain prehistoric change on the Colorado Plateau.

In commenting on the Boxt and Raab article, the primary point I raise here concerns the competence of contemporary archaeological research. I think it is naive to think that we can practice a totally objective archaeology that is divorced from the social concerns, political pressures, and funding constraints of today. Archaeological research is conducted for a variety of reasons and for divergent clients and funding agencies. Collaboration with involved stakeholders, especially native peoples who have a vested interest in the archaeological record, will continue to increase. I have no problem with archaeologists working closely with native groups to identify sacred sites or places, to assist them in becoming federally recognized, to develop strong and legitimate claims for the repatriation of culturally affiliated skeletal remains, associated funerary objects, and sacred objects, or to help them negotiate or promote their native identities to the broader public. My problem is with poor, sloppy, and/or inexcusable archaeological research.

This dissertation presents three cases studies on the archaeology and Historical Ecology of Indigenous shoreline management practices on the Central Coast of California. These studies focus on various invertebrates and marine plants and algae that were harvested and stewarded by coastal Native peoples as foodstuffs and raw materials. The work was undertaken as part of a broader collaborative eco-archaeological research program and partnership between the University of California Campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, The National Park Service (NPS), California State Parks, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMLT) and The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (FIGR or Coast Miwok) that has been carried out over the past decade. The research integrates approaches in collaborative archaeology and the application of eco-archaeological for revitalizing Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Traditional Resource Management (TREM) practices of coastal resources in California. In some cases, this knowledge has been repressed as a result of Spanish missionization and successive waves of colonialism during the Mexican and American periods.

Some of this information can be restored and revitalized through collaborative, community-based archaeological research that investigates Ancient Indigenous resource stewardship and management practices with the goal of providing baseline information for TEK revitalization and the restoration of TREM. The primary purpose of the dissertation is to provide crucial cultural and environmental data regarding Ancient and Historical marine resource harvesting that can be employed in contemporary shoreline stewardship by public land agencies and local Indigenous groups.

This dissertation explores an intercultural engagement and its material aftermath, as well as larger processes of culture change and continuity in sixteenth-century northern California. The starting points for the research are cross-cultural encounters between Tamal hunter-gatherers and English voyagers under Sir Francis Drake in 1579 and the Spanish crew from the shipwrecked Manila galleon San Agustín in 1595, which occurred in tamál-húye, the Coast Miwok-language name for present-day Drakes Bay, California. Archaeological evidence from extensive excavations around tamál-húye during the 1940s-1970s indicates that Tamal villagers took advantage of the body of introduced material culture from the San Agustín shipwreck by salvaging objects and incorporating them into their cultural practices. I utilize this body of existing archaeological data, and a historical anthropological approach incorporating multiple lines of evidence, to address two primary questions about the cross-cultural encounters at tamál-húye that have not been addressed in detail by previous researchers.

First, I evaluate how the Tamal people incorporated material culture from the shipwreck into their cultural practices by analyzing museum collections, archival excavation records and original field notes, and published reports from the earlier investigations, and by incorporating additional data from ethnography, historical documents, and native oral traditions. I recreate the excavations in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze intra-site artifact and feature patterning, and I examine the correlation between distributions of sixteenth-century introduced objects and indigenously-manufactured items. Second, using a framework based on an "event-oriented" archaeology, I assess whether this short-term, pre-colonial event, and the material culture introduced as a result, was a source of long-term Tamal culture change. I investigate whether Tamal salvage and reuse of the ship's cargo, and incorporation of the introduced material culture into their daily lives, resulted in transformations to Tamal cultural practices.

My results suggest the Tamal people incorporated material culture from the San Agustin shipwreck in complex ways. Some porcelain fragments were modified into traditional artifacts such as bead blanks, pendants, bifaces, and other objects, while the large quantity of unmodified porcelain fragments may represent discarded by-products from the production of these and other objects. Overall, the ways in which the Tamal recontextualized sixteenth-century introduced objects were a complex combination of utilitarian and symbolic reuse.

The study of ancient and historic fisheries is essential for understanding past indigenous

economies and ways of life that have relevance for modern fisheries management, restoration

ecology, and conservation biology. Archaeological sites represent long-term biological

repositories; they contain relevant information that provides historical baseline data and

ecological reference points for contemporary conservation biology, restoration ecology, and

fisheries management. Contemporary impacts, historical overfishing, and ecological extinctions

threaten coastal ecosystems, as reduced fish populations no longer interact significantly with

other species in the community. The time-depth of the archaeological record can provide vital

information for scientists, resource managers, policy makers, and sovereign Native American

nations to prioritize resources for conservation and restoration.

As a result of collaborative eco-archaeology with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, the Federated

Indians of Graton Rancheria, the National Park Service, and California State Parks, this

dissertation outlines the ancient fisheries of central California from the Middle Holocene to the

historic era spanning the last 7,000 years. Through the investigation of fourteen archaeological

sites from Point Reyes National Shore to Santa Cruz County, this dissertation offers three case

studies that highlight the value of historical ecology and eco-archaeology of ancient and historic

fisheries. These data contribute information for tribes and federal and state agencies, to inform

the co-management of fisheries by defining the range of organisms used in ancient and historic

times, organism biogeography, and indigenous fishing techniques and technologies.

Spanish missions were established in the San Francisco Bay Area beginning in A.D. 1776 with the founding of Mission San Francisco de Asís (Mission Dolores). Native American accommodation and resistance to colonial settlements has been studied in a variety of contexts in California, including mission sites, but only recently have scholars challenged preconceptions of culture change to examine the range of sociocultural consequences that resulted from colonial encounters. With the present research I seek to identify the places beyond the mission quadrangles where hunter-gatherers both maintained cultural practices and negotiated the adoption of new ones, as well as the processes of cultural change and persistence.

I examine a cluster of three shell mounds--CA-MRN-114, CA-MRN-115, and CA-MRN-328--located on the Marin Peninsula in the hinterland of Mission Dolores for evidence of long-term patterns of hunter-gatherer residence before, during, and after Spanish settlement (1776 -1830s). I critically evaluate whether hunter-gatherers returned on permissible leave from the missions or illicitly to these "places of refuge" to supplement introduced diets with traditional subsistence pursuits; practice seasonally-defined ceremonies and rituals; and to refashion social identities. I argue that periodic occupation of some shell mounds by runaway Indians over time both mirrors Coast Miwok subsistence routines that predate colonial settlement and would have reaffirmed connections to ancestral territories among mission Indians.

My dissertation research contributes to the growing body of scholarship dealing with culture contact and colonialism. I frame my research within theories of landscape, resistance, practice, identity, and materiality, and I employ a combination of archaeological methods--digital mapping, surface collection, geophysical survey, augering, and targeted excavation; specialized analyses, including X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, AMS radiocarbon dating, and obsidian hydration dating; historical documents; and oral interviews with Coast Miwok descendants. My results suggest that, despite missionization efforts, hunter-gatherers continued to occupy shell mounds likely reinforcing connections to ancestral territories throughout subsequent periods of Mexican and American settlement in the San Francisco Bay area.