UC Santa Barbara

In the absence of agriculture, past maritime cultures intensified their fishing pursuits, and often these changes were accompanied by the development of new technologies that aided in accessing principal resources. On the California Channel Islands, intensive fishing in the past was associated with significant changes in settlement organization and sociopolitical complexity. Extensive research on fisher-hunter-gatherers of the northern Channel Islands has shown that communities generally coalesced in residential settlements and intensified fishing practices beginning ~1500 years ago. In contrast, studies based on the Tongva (Gabrielino) and their ancestors from the southern Channel Islands suggest that the timing of early village development and prolific fishery exploitation is much earlier. This dissertation investigates Indigenous history on Santa Catalina Island in order to give insight to settlement trends and fishing-hunting practices on the largest, but least known southern Channel Island. I report the first systematic radiocarbon chronology for Santa Catalina Island and establish a baseline against which to compare settlement patterns against. These findings document 6000 years of Indigenous history and showcase how communities increased in size and number during periods of persistent drought throughout the region and are distinct from the northern Channel Islands where the number of communities decreased. To better understand the transition to fishing economies on Santa Catalina Island, I analyze shellfish biomass across all Channel Islands. I report significant variation in optimal intertidal shellfish habitats among the islands and present biological findings from rocky intertidal species surveys in order to demonstrate the crucial differences in modern shellfish densities. The research emphasizes how the environment, particularly the abundance of shellfish and the characteristics of the coastlines, significantly shaped the subsistence tactics and tool technologies of Indigenous people of the Channel Islands. Finally, this research tracks diachronic changes in fishing-hunting patterns across three residential sites spanning ~1200 years. The results document changing patterns in prey selection over time, extensive deepwater fishing with advanced watercraft, and a shift in labor dynamics due to the rise of centralized labor and formal leadership structures. This research adds to the expanding knowledge about an island often overlooked in hunter-gatherer studies, underscoring the profound history of the Island Tongva and their ancestors.