Hollywood Riviera: An Early Milling Stone Horizon Site in Los Angeles County, California

Abstract

AbstractConstruction activities at Torrance County Beach in Los Angeles County, California, recently removed the last remnant of Hollywood Riviera, a once important archaeological site. Among the artifacts recovered during earth-moving operations and from earlier surface hunts are numerous handstones, milling stones, and cobble hammers. Also included in the collection are two mortars, a pestle, and a few rude choppers. Smaller stone-work consists of large, coarsely flaked projectile points, broken knife blades, simple flake scrapers, and an unusual chipped "crescent." The plentiful seed-grinding implements testify to a seed-collecting mode of subsistence for Hollywood Riviera's former inhabitants, whereas a near absence of molluscan remains in the archaeological deposit suggests that they were an inland people, recently moved to the seashore, who had not yet acquired a taste for shellfish. Occupation at the site appears to have occurred entirely within the Early Milling Stone horizon of the southern California coast, dated roughly between 5000 and 2000 B.C., and presumably during an early phase of it.