Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

The birth of California archaeology and the systematic exploration of California’s past can arguably be traced to the 1870s and (to a large extent) to the work of three very different men—Stephen Bowers, León de Cessac, and Paul Schumacher. All three carried out the majority of their excavations primarily on the Channel Islands and along the Santa Barbara coast, and all three generated extensive, often poorly studied collections that are presently curated in institutions largely outside of California.