Abstract
The significance of palaeoclimatic change in the emergence of sociopolitical complexity among maritime hunter-gatherers in southern California has been an active subject of debate over the past fifteen years. Interpretations on the timing and nature of palaeoenvironmental change and its relationship to cultural change have shifted as new high-resolution climate records have been reported. I provide evidence for buffering mechanisms that evolved over centuries and propose that past Chumash societies were more equipped to respond to droughts, El Niño events, and other environmental transformations than were agricultural societies. I conclude that a ranked society developed in the Chumash region prior to the Middle/Late Transitional period (ad 1150 and 1300) and that chronological evidence currently lacks sufficient resolution to argue for punctuated change.
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