Reconstructing Migrations in California Prehistory

Abstract

SNTHROPOLOGISTS WORKING IN CALIFORNIA have, virtually from the inception of the discipline, cited the immigration of ethnic groups as one of the most likely ways to account for the tremendous cultural diversity in the area as documented by ethnologists. Likewise, following on an early theoretical interest in the relationships of language and culture, California ethnologists quickly began to implement a cultural taxonomy using language as the primary classification attribute. This classificatory relationship between culture, language, and ethnicity remains firmly entrenched and has had a considerable influence on the development of archaeology in California. In the past decade there has been a resurgence of studies which link and reconstructions of culture in California. Such studies are labeled paleolinguistics, archaeological linguistics, or linguistic prehistory, and the fact that both linguists and archaeologists use these labels for their work, further emphasizes the relationship between the two fields on this avenue of study. Certainly the most elegant statement in this regard for California prehistory is that by Michael Moratto in his book California Archaeology. Along with the rejuvenation of prehistory in California archaeology came the resurrection of migration as a (perhaps the) primary mechanism for the diffusion of language. Then too, some archaeologists and linguists have sought to discover material culture correlates of language and population movements (read ethnic groups), and we rather quickly find ourselves back into the sort of diffusionist modeling of culture change which the New Archaeology worked so hard to dispel. This return to history should, however, jog our memories about some earlier anthropological approaches to culture change, particularly those that address acculturation and assimilation processes involving migratory groups. I should make it clear that my discussion of the interpretation of migrations applies only in the context of the California culture area, specifically relating to those gatherer-hunter economies which characterize the area. Extrapolations of this discussion and its interpretations would not be appropriate for groups with significantly different economic and socio-political organization. It should be noted,