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Advanced maritime technology associated with long-distance exchange and intensified resource acquisition has been linked to the development of stratification and greater sociopolitical complexity in the Pacific Rim region. One such example is the emergence of hereditary chiefs among the Chumash Indians of southern California. Plank bouts owned by a...
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... plank canoe was known as the tomol by the Chu- mash, and by the Tongva, their neighbors and exchange partners, as the ti 'at. The to mol and the ti 'at were described by diarists on essentially every major excursion to the Santa Barbara Channel region (Fig- ure 1), all of whom were clearly impressed by the watercraft, the distribution of which apparently did not extend to the north past Point Conception or to the south past Malibu, except for its appearance on Santa Catalina and San Clemente Islands (Brown 1967;Heizer 1938;Heizer and Massey 1953;Robinson 1942Robinson , 1943. Cabrillo provided the earliest men- tion of the plank canoe in 1542 when he observed many canoes, first at Santa Catalina Island and then throughout the Santa Barbara Channel region (Bolton 1976:23-39). ...
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... Librado Kitsepawit listed the materials needed to build the plank canoe, including pine or redwood logs split into boards, milkweed rope to sew the boards together, and a resinous asphaltum (bitumen) and pine pitch mixture known as yop for caulking and waterproofing the ship. As described by Librado Kitsepawit, the largest canoes could be up to 9 meters long and could carry over a dozen people, although smaller canoes (circa 4 to 5 meters) with smaller crews were more common (Gamble, 2002;Hudson et al., 1978). Librado Kitsepawit noted that the asphaltum required to waterproof the canoe could not be found on the Channel Islands, meaning that islanders needed to acquire canoe construction materials through trade with the mainland (Fauvelle, 2011(Fauvelle, , 2014Fauvelle & Perry 2019, 2023Hudson et al., 1978). ...
... Based on an analysis of canoe planks, drills, and caulking plugs, Gamble (2002) has argued that fully formed tomols were in use in the Chumash area by at least 600 CE. It is possible that prototype or composite canoes may have existed before this, and woodworking tools from the Early Holocene on San Clemente Island suggest that some form of advanced boatbuilding may have occurred during the Early Holocene (Cassidy et al., 2004). ...
... The details of these changes are better understood in California, in part due to our better understanding of the chronology of boat innovation in that area (Arnold. 1995;Fauvelle, 2011;Gamble, 2002). Importantly, these transformations were not limited to the immediate regions surrounding southern California. ...
Complex watercraft were central to the functioning of many Indigenous coastal and island communities around the world. These communities, however, are often assumed to be small-scale bounded social entities adapted to local ecosystems, especially in comparison to land-based agricultural societies, states, and empires. In this paper we seek to understand how regional interactions helped create and sustain systems of Indigenous social and cultural diversity by taking a fresh and comparative look at the "active" role played by local boat-building traditions in the networks and social dynamics of Indigenous coastal communities. We argue that one critical yet often overlooked aspect of the use of watercraft is the capacity for advanced boat technologies to have "transformative" impacts on local communities by creating new kinds of social relations and networking opportunities. In this paper we undertake a comparative analysis of two Indigenous boat-building traditions, one in southern California and the other in Northeast Asia. We examine how innovation in maritime watercraft technology contributed to the formation of wide-ranging interaction spheres where participation by Indigenous communities helped shape the history of the wider region. We suggest that innovations in boat technologies led to positive-feedback loops of social intensification which significantly contributed to the historical trajectories of both world regions.
... The southern Californian plank canoe was one of the most advanced watercraft ever developed in pre-Columbian North America (Arnold 1995;Gamble 2002;Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978). Built from pine and redwood planks lashed together using milkweed rope and waterproofed with a mixture of natural asphaltum (bitumen) and pine pitch, the plank canoe allowed for longer and faster voyages than the dugout canoes and composite boats that preceded it (Fauvelle 2011;Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978). ...
... Built from pine and redwood planks lashed together using milkweed rope and waterproofed with a mixture of natural asphaltum (bitumen) and pine pitch, the plank canoe allowed for longer and faster voyages than the dugout canoes and composite boats that preceded it (Fauvelle 2011;Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978). By the time of Spanish contact, the plank canoe was central to sea-going lifeways in southern California, allowing for chiefs and other political elites to conduct lucrative trading voyages that formed the basis of their political economic system (Arnold 2001;Fauvelle 2011;Gamble 2002). The innovation of the plank canoe was therefore a critical development in the history of indigenous southern California. ...
... Much of what we know about the plank canoe comes from Ynezeño and Ventureño Chumash individuals Mar� ıa Solares and Fernando Librado Kitsepawit, who relayed information and stories about the plank canoe to anthropologist John Peabody Harrington in the early twentieth century (Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978). Subsequent investigations of the innovation of the plank canoe continued to focus largely on the Chumash, suggesting that plank canoes were first developed on Limuw (Santa Cruz Island) or the adjacent coast of modern Santa Barbara and Carpinteria (Arnold 2001;Gamble 2002;Hudson, Timbrook, and Rempe 1978). Archaeological evidence of early plank canoe use, however, can be found in both Chumash and Tongva territory (Heizer 1938;Hudson and Blackburn 1979, 345, 347). ...
What constraints and conditions are conducive to the innovation of more advanced watercraft technology? This paper explores this question by modeling ancient voyages in the Channel Island region of southern California. The Chumash and Tongva cultures of this region invented an advanced form of boat, the sewn plank canoe, around 500 CE. This new technology led to a rapid increase in maritime travel and transformed the maritime political economy of the region. In this paper we use agent-based ocean voyage modeling to examine the capacities of a range of indigenous boat types to travel important routes in the Channel Region at different times of the year. Our results indicate that while several different boat types would have been conducive for voyaging from the mainland coast to adjacent islands such as Limuw (Santa Cruz) and Pimu (Catalina), voyages to outlying islands, including Tuqan (San Miguel) and especially Haraasnga (San Nicolas), would have been difficult for much of the year in dugout or reed boats. We argue that early mariners plying these routes would have been under strong pressure to innovate faster and more seaworthy craft, possibly leading to the eventual development of the sewn plank canoe.
... Although the exact chronology of the origins of political hierarchy in southern California has provoked considerable debate, it is clear that major social changes took place in the Channel Region between around 500 CE and 1300 CE (Raab et al., 1995;Arnold,Colten,and Pletka, 1997;Gamble, Walker, and Russell, 2001;Arnold and Green, 2002;Kennett, 2005;Gamble, 2020). The sewn plank canoe, one of the most complex forms of watercraft ever developed in North America, was in use by at least 500 CE (Gamble, 2002). Use of the plank canoe led to increasing levels of transport and trade throughout the region and was likely an important mechanism for the concentration of power in an increasingly small group of elites (Arnold, 1995;Gamble, 2002;Fauvelle, 2011;Fauvelle and Perry 2019;Fauvelle and Perry 2023;Fauvelle, 2013;Fauvelle, 2014). ...
... The sewn plank canoe, one of the most complex forms of watercraft ever developed in North America, was in use by at least 500 CE (Gamble, 2002). Use of the plank canoe led to increasing levels of transport and trade throughout the region and was likely an important mechanism for the concentration of power in an increasingly small group of elites (Arnold, 1995;Gamble, 2002;Fauvelle, 2011;Fauvelle and Perry 2019;Fauvelle and Perry 2023;Fauvelle, 2013;Fauvelle, 2014). By the end of the Middle Period we can see substantial M. Fauvelle and A.D. Somerville differences in wealth between burials in cemeteries, suggesting to some archaeologists that incipient political hierarchies were already in place (Gamble, Walker, and Russell, 2001;Gamble,Walker,and Russell, 2002). ...
How different were the lives of elites and commoners in early complex societies? This paper examines this question using data from three fisher-hunter-gatherer sites in southern California. Using shell bead counts from burials as proxies for social status and previously published human stable isotope values as indicators of dietary practices, we examine the relationship between diet and status across a period of major sociopolitical change. Our results found no significant relationships between the quantity of beads and stable isotope values, indicating that differential access to foods was not a significant way in which status was manifested in these communities. Instead, we suggest that activities including ownership of seagoing canoes, access to imported goods, and the provisioning of community feasts were likely venues for elite status signaling.
... Status differentiation, craft specialization, and ritual behavior are all cultural hallmarks of the Late Holocene and Late Period (Arnold 2001a;Graesch 2001, 2004;Erlandson and Jones 2002;Glassow 1996;Glassow et al. 2007;Kennett 2005;Pletka 2001;Rick 2007;2011;Rick et al. 2005). Major technological advances also occurred during the latter half of the Late Holocene, including the development of circular shell fishhooks, the plank canoe, purple olive snail cup beads, net weights, contracting stem points, harpoons, and the bow and arrow (Arnold 1995;Braje, Erlandson, and Rick 2021;Gamble 2002;Glassow 1996;Rick et al. 2002). ...
... Rather than a sudden and dramatic change at ∼800 cal BP, the finfishing-intensive economies typical of the MLT and Late periods were already in place at several sites across the NCI, especially after about 1,500 cal BP (see Figure 5). This was probably facilitated by new technologies such as single-piece shell fishhooks and the tomol that were first used during the Middle Period, as well as gradual changes in subsistence, technology, and sociopolitical organization that fully emerged during the Late Period (see King 1990;Gamble 2002;2008;Glassow 1996). More definitive answers likely will require additional data from a variety of Middle Period archaeological sites across the NCI to further contextualize the scale and timing of subsistence shifts. ...
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.
... 26 Shell bead money has a long history among the Chumash. Gamble (2020) argues that shell bead money may have been in circulation as long as 2,000 years ago, but dates the cupped shell beads to about the mid-twelfth century. The value of a bead string was determined by its length and degree of fineness. ...
... Tensions that could have been created by the resulting income inequality were alleviated by an organized schedule of feasting. These feasts brought communities together, maintained social contact across groups, and redistributed resources across the regions (Gamble 2008). 29 In summary, specialization and intra-regional trade, no doubt with some trade outside the region, resulted in higher standards of living for all three regions (Carlos and Lewis 2014). ...
The economic history of the United States is that of Europeans and their institutions. Indigenous nations are absent. This absence is partly due to a lack of data but perhaps also to a perception that Indigenous communities contributed little to U.S. growth. Three case studies explore the economic complexity and social stratification across different nations/regions prior to contact. Migrants to the United States came not to an empty land but one with settled agriculture, complex production processes, and extensive trade relations, upon which Europeans built.
... There has been considerable debate about what types of watercraft were used in Alta and Baja California waters through time (e.g., Arnold 2007;Des Lauriers 2005;Fagan 2004;Gamble 2002), but the reality is that we can only guess. The same is true for the western Pacific, where few scholars doubt that late Pleistocene voyagers had relatively seaworthy boats and made voyages ranging up to 100-150 km for at least 50,000 years, yet no archaeological evidence of boats older than about 9,000 years has been found, including rock art or effigies. ...
In a recent issue of California Archaeology, Jim Cassidy (2021. “A Technological Assessment of the North Pacific Seafaring Hypothesis: Informed by California Channel Island Research.” California Archaeology 13 (1): 69–92). provided a flawed assessment of the potential role boats and seafaring played in the initial peopling of the Americas, as well as the nature of watercraft used to settle Santarosae and California’s other Channel Islands. His arguments contain numerous errors and inconsistencies and are based primarily on his previously published interpretation of lithic tools from the Early Holocene component at the Eel Point site on San Clemente Island. Here, we point out the most obvious errors and weaknesses in Cassidy’s arguments and present a more realistic view of what we know and do not know about early seafaring and maritime technology in North America and southern California.
... The invention of the circular shell fishhook near the start of the Middle Period may have led to a subsequent increase in finfishing, possibly linked to the need to provision increasing populations (Rick et al., 2002). The sewn plank canoe was another major technological development dating to around AD 500 (Gamble, 2002) which would have greatly facilitated pelagic fishing as well as travel and trade between California's Islands and the mainland coast (Arnold, 1995;Fauvelle and Perry, 2019;King, 1976). Much of this trade was fueled by the exchange of Olivella shell beads (made from the species Callianax biplicata, previously Olivella biplicata), the production of which was centered on the Northern Channel Islands and intensified greatly over the course of the Middle Period (Arnold and Munns, 1994;Gamble, 2020). ...
Understanding how maritime hunter-gatherer diets changed through time in response to increasing social complexity can help us understand important transitions in early human history. This paper presents new baseline stable isotope values for southern California with an emphasis on marine plant and animal species. We use our baseline database to reevaluate human stable isotope values from the region using Bayesian mixing models to interpret dietary patterns across time and geographic space. Our analysis compares categories of foods consumed between island, coastal, and interior populations across the Middle and Late Holocene (circa 8000 to 168 cal BP) occupational history of precolonial southern California. Our results show a clear increase in the importance of high trophic marine foods, such as finfish, relative to low trophic level food, such as shellfish through time, paralleling increases in population size, economic intensification, and village aggregation in the Channel Region. This case study displays the capacity of Bayesian modeling to infer patterns of dietary change in the past when applied to human isotope values and adds to previous studies on the relationship between population growth, technological innovation, and the intensification of resource extraction in the region.
... Many of the largest-scale colonization events occurred in the mid-to late-Holocene with the expansion of foragers and food-producing populations in the western Pacific, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and coastal North America (for example , Fitzpatrick 2013;Gamble 2002;Leppard 2014;Thomas 2008;chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10). These episodes resulted in the expansion of human populations into some of the most remote islands and archipelagos in the world. ...
... One of the unfortunate ironies for researchers attempting to find evidence for island colonization is that the primary mechanisms for human dispersal (that is, watercraft) are rarely preserved in the archaeological record (but see Cassidy et al. 2004;Fitzpatrick 2013;Gamble 2002;Thomas 2008: 227;Wheeler 2003). Two notable exceptions come from the Pacific, where remnants of East Polynesian sailing canoes were discovered in New Zealand (Johns et al. 2014) and Huahine in the Society Islands (Sinoto 1979). ...
... Two notable exceptions come from the Pacific, where remnants of East Polynesian sailing canoes were discovered in New Zealand (Johns et al. 2014) and Huahine in the Society Islands (Sinoto 1979). While it is well known that Native Americans occupied the Channel Islands off the California coast for at least the past 12,000 years and required watercraft to reach them, the oldest known evidence for canoes only dates to circa 3,000 years ago (Cassidy et al. 2004;Gamble 2002). Lacking archaeological evidence for watercraft, archaeologists working on islands have instead turned to a number of productive methods and conceptual frameworks for resolving patterns and processes of colonization, including experimental voyaging, computer simulations, and geographic information systems (GIS) models. ...
... At historic contact, there was widespread use of plank canoes throughout the Channel Islands and Santa Barbara mainland (Arnold 2007). The development of sophisticated composite watercraft appears to have taken place over the preceding several millennia and reached its peak during the late Holocene (Gamble 2002). ...
... The prey was then transported to residential bases for processing and sharing among semisedentary collectors (Ames 2002;Raab et al. 2009). These social and technological innovations suggest some fundamental aspects of a seafaring society that reached florescence during the late Holocene among the ethnographically recognized Chumash and Tongva people (Arnold 2004;Gamble 2002). ...
The proposal of an initial human coastal migration into the New World during the late Pleistocene has gained considerable support in recent years. However, the methods of such a migration are not clear and the proposition that it was accompanied by seafaring around the North Pacific to access a kelp highway is still subject to debate. Recent discoveries now suggest that humans crossed Beringia into North America below the ice at least 17,000 years ago. Conversely, in southern California, people are not recorded on the ancient island of Santarosae any earlier than 13,000 years ago. In contrast, the use of seaworthy watercraft is evident only around 10,000 years ago when sea level inundation separated Santarosae into the four present-day islands of San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa. At this time, early Holocene sea level rise appears to have stimulated watercraft technological innovations.
... This included subsistence on coastal resources including shellfish, fish, and sea mammals (e.g., Erlandson, 1988Erlandson, , 1994Erlandson, , 2001Erlandson et al., 2008;Glassow, 1993bGlassow, , 1997Glassow, , 2005Glassow et al., 2007Glassow et al., , 2010Jazwa et al., 2012Jazwa et al., , 2016bJazwa et al., , 2017bJazwa and Perry, 2013;Kennett, 1998Kennett, , 2005Raab et al., 2009;Rick et al., 2005;Walker and DeNiro, 1986). Craft specialists manufactured plank canoes (tomols) that had restricted ownership and were used for trade and accessing offshore sea mammal and pelagic fish species (Arnold, 1992a(Arnold, , 1995(Arnold, , 2001Gamble, 2002;Fagan, 2004). Specialists also made Olivella biplicata 1 shell beads that were exchanged widely and chert microdrills that were used to drill holes for the beads (Arnold, 1987(Arnold, , 1990(Arnold, , 1992a(Arnold, , 1992b(Arnold, , 2001Arnold and Munns, 1994;Munns and Arnold, 2002;Kennett, 2005;King, 1990;Rick, 2007). ...
