Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

In the summer of 1986 a rescue excavation was conducted by a University of California, Santa Cruz, archaeological field class at an eroding shell midden, CA-MNT-1223 (the Dolan I Site), on the Big Sur coast (Fig. 1). Situated 70 km. (45 mi.) south of the city of Monterey in ethnographic Esselen territory, the site had been recorded two seasons earlier by another field class during the completion of a cultural resources survey of Landels-Hill Big Creek Reserve (Jones et al. 1987). Full results of the excavation will be detailed in an impending report, but the most unusual find was a Desert Side-notched projectile point made from a fragment of abalone (Haliotis rufescens) shell.