Contextualizing Late Holocene Subsistence Change on California’s Northern Channel Islands: A Middle Period Case Study from Santa Cruz Island

Abstract

ABSTRACT The complex relationship between sociopolitical complexity, natural climatic change, and subsistence strategies on California’s Northern Channel Islands has long been a topic of archaeological inquiry. One period of particular interest to researchers is the Middle-to-Late Period Transition (MLT, 800–650 cal BP), during which Chumash hierarchical sociopolitical organization is thought to have solidified. Multiple models of sociopolitical change have been proposed, all of which acknowledge the relationship between growing populations, shifting dietary patterns, climatic events, and sociopolitical structure. Considerable debate remains, with some pointing to the importance of events during the late Middle Period (∼1,500–800 cal BP) or earlier. While these models partly rely on dietary data from late Middle, MLT, and Late Period (650 cal BP–AD 1542) archaeological sites, research at late Middle Period sites has often been more limited than work at later sites, leaving an imbalance in our understanding of subsistence shifts and changing cultural and environmental dynamics. Here, we present faunal and dietary data from two well-dated Middle Period sites on Limuw (Santa Cruz Island) that document an intensification of finfishing in the Middle Period, supporting models that see the evolution of Island Chumash complexity as a more gradual phenomenon.