Environmental Reconstruction in Archaeology

1. Environmental Reconstruction in Archaeology

2. Why reconstruct past ecosystems? • The farther back one goes in the past, the more closely were people bound to their ecosystems. • Processes of social and cultural change are imbedded within this relationship. • Present and past landscapes are/were anthropogenic. One can arrive at an understanding about how landscapes came to look the way they do as a result of past human activities.

3. Star Carr, Yorkshire, UK

4. Star Carr was investigated from 1949-51 by Grahame Clark of Cambridge University. He pioneered an environmental approach at the site. Harry Godwin Botanist

5. The Vale of Pickering today

6. Lake Flixton 11,000 years ago

7. Clark had been searching for a Mesolithic site where conditions favored the preservation of organic material. Organic remains do preserve well in peat.

9. Some spectacular finds

10. Palynology

14. Geomorphology at BolsaChica

15. History • Rancho Los Nietos was granted to Jose Manuel Nieto in 1784. It consisted of 167,000 acres. It was broken up in 1841, and part became Rancho Las Bolsas. This became the Stearns ranch in 1860. • The lagoon was an estuary of a branch of the Santa Ana River called Freeman Creek. • Oil was discovered in the 1920’s, leading to the building of dikes, water drainage, and the building of roads.

18. Archaeology • The lagoon is flanked by Bolsa Chica mesa to the northwest, and Huntington mesa to the southeast • The Spanish called the area shell beach due to the shell eroding out of numerous middens. • There are multiple sites on the mesas: ORA-83, ORA-85, ORA-365, ORA-82, ORA-88. The sites show human activity from 9,000 to 1,000 years ago. ORA-83, the Cogged Stone site is the most famous.

19. Cogged stones

20. Changing Landscapes • An excavation at CA-OR-83 overseen by Paul Langenwalter. Soils from the excavation are being wet screened.

21. Ca-ORA-83 was first occupied 9,000 years ago. • 7,500 years ago an embayment occurred which brought the ocean up to the foot of the mesa. • Shellfish were collected, beads were made from olivellashells, and marine mammals and seabirds like the auk were hunted. • Erosion caused by cattle grazing in the 18th – 19th centuries and farming in the early 20th caused the lagoon to become filled in.