Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

In this paper we have focused on the northern Santa Lucia Range, where archaeological surveys and excavations, completed during the last decade, provide on-the-ground validation of settlements and cultural features suggested in the Harrington notes and records.

This paper contains a brief review of coastal residential structures, illustrating their modes of construction and possible uses. This review provides a basis of comparison with residential structures investigated at the Nursery site (CA-SCLI-1215), San Clemente Island. The latter provides new information from the southern Channel Islands, a region that remains largely terra incognita with regard to maritime cultural evolution. The Nursery site data include well preserved architectural features with associated radiocarbon dates. These data show that residential structures similar to those of the northern Santa Barbara Channel were being constructed on San Clemente Island as early as 3,700 radiocarbon years B.P. We also suggest that the appearance of these structures may have been related to important maritime economic trends that affected all of coastal southern California.

This paper discusses the difficulty of distinguishing authentic versus fake effigy figures from coastal and island southern California, and the commotion caused among the scientific community as it attempted to deal with atypical effigies that were bought and sold by various dealers, individuals, and museums. Some of the individuals involved in these dealings were known pothunters. This fact compounds the problem of authenticating pieces that lack firm provenience.

In sum, the Pectol shields have been the subject of debate since their discovery. Pectol thought they were 3,000-year-old objects demonstrating contact between Utah and Egypt via Pem. Beckwith thought they were ancient vestments of a high priest or medicine man. Morss and Malouf thought they were made by modern Indians, with Morss suggesting they had an affinity to Apache and Navajo. Wormington and Aikens believed they were Fremont artifacts, with Aikens suggesting they were Athapascan in origin or products of proto- Apacheans. Grant obtained a radiocarbon date that established their age within the past 300 years, and Schaafsma used this date to exclude them as products of the Fremont. Schaafsma, however, retained the belief of Wormington and Aikens that the rock art motif of the shield-bearing figure was made by the Fremont peoples, but its origin was not established.

Ludlow Cave (CA-SBR-1887), also known as Two Raven Cave, was first formally recorded by E. W. Shepard in 1958. A complex and confusing trail of documentation follows this initial recordation. Shepard made several trips to the site, collecting artifacts which were subsequently turned over to the San Bernardino County Museum in the early 1960s. His records make reference to vandalism, but the degree of disturbance is unknown. The museum agreed to loan the collection to California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB), to be cataloged and analyzed. The purpose of this paper is to present a summary of the site history and recovered materials contained in the Ludlow Cave collection.

This report documents the excavation and subsequent analysis of a complex of circular stone features designated Feature G of Locus 1, CA-SDI-5938, located in a granite bedrock outcrop on a high knoll overlooking San Pasqual and Westwood valleys in San Diego County (Fig. 1). Investigations of CA-SDI-5938 were conducted by WESTEC Services in the winter of 1985-86 (Carrico and Kyle 1987:1-1). The site is composed of four loci located on both sides of a large seasonal drainage. The outcrop containing the enclosure complex is roughly oval and measures 22 m. east/west by 12 m. north/south. The bedrock outcrop and terrain immediately to the west are relatively level, forming a shelf. The ground rises to the north at a moderate angle and drops off steeply to the south and east.

This comment, in large measure, is a statement about the present state of knowledge of American archaeology in 1994. The unpublished "gray literature" grows more massive with each passing day. Most of it does not warrant publication, but some of it is critical to our knowledge. I do not know what influence our "dark gray" publications would have had on Catherine S. Fowler, David Rhode, or Brian Hemphill, but I am certain those preliminary reports would have made some impression on their critical thinking about archaeology in the Great Basin. I recognize some of our ideas in print by various subsequent authors. I also think one solution to this problem would be that the State Historic Preservation archaeologists, who do read these "gray" reports, should make a recommendation as to whether these reports should be published.

Two Hunting-Related Archaic Sites in Elko County, Nevada. Frederic F. Petersen and Steven M. Stearns. Sparks, NV: Falcon Hill Press, 1992, 147 pp., 32 figs., 11 tables, 7 plates, 5 appendices, $18.00 (paper).

Essays on the Prehistory of Maritime California. Terry L. Jones, ed. Center for Archaeological Research at Davis, Publication No. 11, 1992, vii + 277 pp., 72 figs, 56 tables, $22.00 (paper).

California Indian Shamanism, Lowell John Bean, ed. Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 39, 1992, viii + 274 pp., 25 figures (7 color), $33.00 (cloth), $27.00 (paper).

There Grows a Green Tree: Papers in Honor of David A. Fredrickson. Greg White, Pat Mikkelsen, William R. Hildebrandt, and Mark E. Basgall, editors. Center for Archaeological Research at Davis, Publication No. 11, 1993, 423 pp., $27.00 (paper).

Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians. Thomas C. Blackburn and Kat Anderson (compilers and editors). MenloPark: Ballena Press Anthropological Papers No. 40, 1993, 476 pp., 53 figs., index, $41.50, (hard cover), $31.50 (paper).