Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

Los Angeles: Privately printed, 2007 224 pp., 280 illus., $29.95 (cloth)

The following list of dissertations, all of which have appeared in the last decade, is intended to call attention to significant new scholarship that might be relevant to a reader’s particular research topic but that might otherwise be overlooked. Some works on the list have since been published in one form or another, though most have not. Summaries can be found in Dissertation Abstracts, which is readily available online. Readers are urged to bring any relevant dissertation that may have been inadvertently left off the list to the attention of the editors.

Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2008, 383 pp., 76 gures, preface, prologue, epilogue, extensive notes, references, index, $65 (hard cover), $26.95 (paper).

Boston and New york: Houghton Mif in Company, 2008 335 pp., maps, bibliography, biographies, illustrations, index; $29.95 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-395-63336-6

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008 376 pp., 50 gures, 23 tables, notes, bibliography, index; $49.95 (cloth) ISBN: 978:-0-520-25441-1

Ridgecrest: Maturango Press, 2007 Maturango Museum Publication No. 22, 186 pages, 25 gures, 30 tables, references, glossary, subject index, author index, $30.00 (paper)

This paper takes a geoarchaeological contextual approach in arguing that pavement quarries—those assay and reduction events directed at cobbles that often litter expansive desert alluvial landforms—can provide a powerful index of changing trans-Holocene settlement organization. Focusing on multiple lines of evidence—age estimates of alluvial fan surfaces, quarry technology, patination pro les, and regional toolstone consumption trends at residential sites—we explore the temporal and technological development of quarry pavement use at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Mojave Desert. The analysis reveals that chert pavement quarrying was in ascendance during the early portion of the Late Holocene and had a strong biface production component. This landform-based model of Holocene pavement quarry development provides support for reconstructions that envision Gypsum period hunter-gatherers as residentially stable, and as undertaking increased logistical forays during which pavement quarry procurement took place.

Native American mitochondrial DNA belongs to one of ve haplogroups de ned by lineage-speci c markers. Haplogroup frequency distribution is non-random among cultures. At historical contact, the Gabrielino occupied the southernmost California Channel Islands and the adjacent Los Angeles Basin. The Chumash thrived on the northern Channel Islands and Santa Barbara mainland. The Gabrielino were linguistically, culturally, and possibly genetically distinct from the Chumash. Haplogroup frequencies were determined for two prehistoric populations from San Clemente Island (Eel Point and the Nursery Site) to investigate Uto-Aztecan migration onto the southern Channel Islands. Analysis included three measures of genetic distance and phylogenetic analysis, as well as Fisher’s exact tests. The Eel Point and Nursery Site frequency distributions were compared to one another, and to extant Uto-Aztecan and Great Basin/California populations. Results suggest that the prehistoric occupants of Eel Point and the Nursery Site were not closely related to one another or to the Chumash.

For thirty years, Fremont ceramic analysts have primarily relied on the ceramic typology proposed by R. Madsen in 1977. The intervening years of research have yielded a wealth of relevant data and re ned analytical techniques. Contemporary analysts regularly identify variations in Fremont ceramic temper that exceed Madsen’s descriptions. In addition, key observations from previous analyses were omitted from the Madsen typology. I review past and current conceptions of Fremont ceramic types as well as the literature pertaining to the treatment of ceramic variation, speci cally temper. Building on this work and on recent developments in Hohokam ceramic studies, I suggest a method to identify and exploit temper variability in Fremont ceramics. I then propose a reclassi cation of Fremont pottery within a Type – Series –Ware hierarchy. Fremont pottery is subsumed under a single ware, with series de ned by temper and types by surface treatment

This paper examines the use of V-style sh traps on the western recessional shorelines of ancient Lake Cahuilla. We use multiple lines of evidence to examine the function of these traps, including ethnographic data, sh biology, excavations of sh traps, and experimental replication of sh trap designs. Our study indicates that biological characteristics of the sh were central to the effectiveness of the traps and dictated trap placement and design.

the recent important article by Saint-onge, Johnson, and talaugon (JCGBA 29(1):29–57), “Archaeoastronomical Implications of a Northern Chumash Arborglyph,” unfortunately perpetuates erroneous records of poorly known rock art sites in California’s Carrizo Plain that we wish to bring to your attention.

During the course of his pioneering involvement with California archaeology, Stephen Bowers wrote a number of brief essays (in often somewhat obscure venues) on the prehistory and Native American inhabitants of the Santa Barbara region. These essays can occasionally seem repetitious to the modern reader, since Bowers was fond of using particular phrases or even entire paragraphs more than once, and the same wording and examples can be found in various combinations in manuscripts often separated by many years. The unpublished manuscript presented here (which was written in 1897, well after Bowers’ period of active involvement in archaeology) is no exception, in that it contains some of the same material found in other, recently published Bowers writings (see particularly Appendix B of Arlene Benson’s the Noontide Sun: the Field Journals of the Reverend Stephen Bowers, Pioneer California Archaeologist [Ballena Press, 1997]). However, it also contains previously unpublished information that is unique, signi cant, and still germane to contemporary discussions of Chumash social organization. The manuscript (Southwest Museum Ms. 532, Folder 19) is reproduced here through the courtesy of the Braun Research Library, Autrey National Center of the American West, Los Angeles.