ABSTRACT
Based on ethnographic accounts and archaeological research, warfare among the indigenous populations of California was neither rare nor infrequent, and a great deal of research has been done on this topic for Southern California, primarily by Lambert and Walker. As research of warfare and violent behavior in prehistoric populations has grown, studies in California have also expanded to include the northern and central parts of the state. The seminal studies of cranial trauma by Lambert and Walker identifed a peak in cranial vault fractures during the Early Middle period in southern California. Males and females show quite similar patterns of injury location. Females exhibit a slightly higher frequency of trauma in the parietal region, whereas males exhibit high frequencies in both the frontal and parietal bones. The Central Valley was found to have the highest incidence of craniofacial trauma, followed by the San Francisco Bay and the Sierra Nevada.
