The Chumash: How Do Migratory Patterns in SW California Reflect Centralised Control?
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The Chumash: How do migratory patterns in SW California reflect centralised control? ROBBIE LUXFORD The Chumash: How do migratory patterns in SW California reflect centralised control? Robbie Luxford s2410699 MA Thesis Archaeology 4ARX-0910ARCH Supervisor: Dr. L. S. Borck MA World Archaeology University of Leiden Faculty of Archaeology Leiden, 15 June 2019 1 Preface/Acknowledgements I would like to thank my family for supporting me throughout my journey as an archaeologist, from the lows of failing my initial exams in high school to the highs of being accepted for both an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree. Thank you to the tutors that have enabled me to push myself to my limits and helped me realise my potential. Thank you to my first supervisors during my undergraduate that helped me achieve a first in my dissertation and my colleagues and tutors in Canada that gave me the knowledge base to pursue studies involving indigenous people. Thank you to all my tutors and colleagues at Leiden who have introduced me back into academia after a prolonged gap, stimulating my academic mind once more. Lastly, thank you to my colleagues and friends at Border Archaeology who taught me most of what I know in terms of practical exercises. 2 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 6 1.1 Introduction 6 1.2 Literature Review 7 1.2.1 Archaeological studies of migration 7 1.2.2 Archaeological studies of social complexity 8 1.2.3 A range of studies on the Chumash 10 1.3 The Chumash 13 Chapter 2 Methodology 21 2.1 GIS 22 2.2 The Shell-bead industry 23 2.3 Ceremonial events on the Chumash mainland 25 2.4 Missionisation 27 2.5 Pre and Post-contact comparison 28 Chapter 3 Results 30 3.1 The Shell-Bead Industry 30 3.2 Ceremonial Events 36 3.3 Missionisation 39 Chapter 4 Discussion 44 4.1 Shell-Bead Industry 44 4.2 Ceremonial Events 53 4.3 Missionisation 60 4.4 Pre and Post Contact Migration Comparison 66 Chapter 5 Conclusion 69 5.1 Present Day Migration 69 3 5.2 Concluding remarks 70 Abstract 73 Bibliography 75 Figures Figure 1: Established Chumash language groups by the Historic/Mission Period 19 Figure 2: Shell-bead Industry Key 23 Figure 3: Ceremonial event key 25 Figure 4: Missionisation key 27 Figure 5: Area of Santa Ynez Valley/Mountains and suspected migratory patterns 30 Figure 6: East Santa Ynez mountain area including routes 31 Figure 7: West Santa Ynez mountain area including routes 32 Figure 8: Channel Islands including case study sites 33 Figure 9: Santa Cruz Island including case study sites 34 Figure 10: East Santa Cruz Island including distances and projected routes 35 Figure 11: Map of Ventureno region including migratory patterns and villages/ceremonial sites 36 Figure 12: Ventureno region and projected routes which were taken 37 Figure 13: Map of Ventureno region and case study sites 39 Figure 14: Missionisation case study sites and their projected routes 40 Figure 15: Projected route of Channel Island migration patterns during Missionisation 42 Figure 16: Table of bead types at Santa Cruz Island 50 Figure 17: Microblade assemblage at Lu’upsh village dated at the Historic Period 51 Figure 18: Burro Flats Painted Cave 54 4 Figure 19: Lake Manor site 56 Figure 20: Chatsworth painted site 57 Figure 21: Baptism record based on Mission Register Data 61 Tables Table 1: Dates for Chumash regional chronology, modified from L. Gamble 2008 and D. Kennett 2005 13 Table 2: Calculated distance and times for East Santa Ynez Mountains 31 Table 3: Calculated distance and times of West Santa Ynez Mountains 32 Table 4: Calculated distance and times in the Ventureno region 37 Table 5: Calculated distance and times in the Ventureno region during Missionisation 40 Appendices 91 Archaeological Sites 91 Historic Villages 99 5 Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction “As long as you look on migration as a problem, as something to solve, you’re not going to get anywhere. You have to look at it as a human reality that’s as old as humankind. It’s mankind’s oldest poverty reduction strategy. As citizens, we have to find a way to manage it.” – IOM DG William Lacy Swing 2017. Migration is woven into the fabric of human behaviour. The words spoken by William Lacy Swing touch upon the thoughts of present-day migration, but the background of migration through prehistory is much more than just a poverty reduction strategy, it is one of subsistence and resistance to harm. The ancestors of the Chumash people arrived in what is now SW California around 13000BP, relating them genetically to the Clovis people as the site of Daisy Cave in the Channel Islands can be dated to around the Clovis/Folsom periods (Kennett 2005, 121). Over millennia, they eventually formed a social identity recognized as Chumash to the present day. As with all groups through human history, social identity and cultural practices are constantly in flux and the same is true for the Chumash. The largest, most abrupt shift for them likely occurred due to Spanish missionisation. Prior to the Spanish invasion of the region, the ancestors of the Chumash (descending from the Clovis people) were a highly mobile hunter-gatherer group who spread quickly throughout the region after arriving on Californian soil. Eventually, around 8000 BP, they began to settle into permanent villages and the Chumash identity that was present when the first Europeans arrived (Gamble 2008) emerged in this new ecological and social environment. Migration is rarely random, rather, it is a process which has fixed conditions and during the latter stages of Chumash socio-political organisation it can be shown to be a result of centralised control. Through the analysis of three case studies, I will demonstrate how these migratory patterns reflect centralised control and the management of migration by this process. In the conclusion, I will discuss how the Chumash and the later colonizers did not see migration as a problem but as something with positive social benefits. 6 1.2 Literature Review In order to create a clear dialogue that represents the research question, three avenues of literature were required: 1) archaeological studies of migration 2) archaeological studies of social complexity and 3) a range of studies on the Chumash. By doing this each element of the question can be appropriately answered and a concise evaluation can be made. 1.2.1 Archaeological studies of migration Orderly Anarchy by Robert Bettinger (2015) analyses the socio-political organisation within California during the periods in which the Chumash were present, giving an insight into how they were structured and how other groups within California functioned during this time. In order to decipher how communities may have migrated or for what reason, it is crucial to understand how they operated and to what end. As he notes however, it is easy to place the peoples of California in a broad evolutionary perspective; they are hunter-gatherers (2015, 15). This common trait is shared by the groups in California yet they eventually separated to follow different subsistence strategies. In Chapter 4 of this thesis, it will show how the Chumash and other groups came together for certain events as well as the territorial tension which is regularly documented. In the past year J.J. Clark et al. studied migration in the pre-contact US South West, but it is highly relevant to the migration study of Chumash which is presented in this thesis. The study examines the migrations out of Mesa Verde and the Kayenta region and discusses attributes which need to be assessed when migration occurs such as scale, socio-economic context prior to migration in area moved from, organisation and distance travelled and the socio-economic context in area that people moved to (Clark et al. 2019, 263). These attributes can also be related to two sub-brackets of migration when evaluating the Chumash; forced and voluntary migration (Piguet 2018), whereby forced implies that a centralised power controlled where people moved and/or why and voluntary implies that the people had elements of control over their movements. These two forms of movement can be interwoven which is seen in the post-contact period with missionisation. Additional elements that Clark et al. note are that the Kayenta held on to some past traditions whereas the Mesa 7 Verde people moved in order to break from their past (2019, 279). Both these elements are again displayed by the Chumash, differentiating in the pre and post-contact periods. These additional elements are exemplified in a study by Borck and Mills in 2017. This study looks at the model of diffusion, being the movement of ideas rather than people and how communities may have resisted these ideas or embraced them as manners of rejection or acceptance of centralised control. This is apparent in the Chumash society when looking at the shell bead industry. It is apparent that certain inland villages were beginning to experiment with crafting their own beads rather than just obtaining them – the main regions for this craft were on the Californian Channel Islands and coastal sites. The study also argues for the use of network analysis, as through this it can be shown that changing patterns of consumption are driven by the diffusion of goods and their associated ideas (Borck and Mills 2017, 32). This is important to the research question as not only can we view how in the pre-contact period the Chumash moved to areas where they could create the tools for the shell-bead industry but also how further into the period just prior to post-contact their ideas were widely spread.