ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the basketry traditions of Northern California. Local patterns of linguistic and cultural diversity were extremely high despite a more general dependence on similar modes of hunting, fishing and gathering, in turn related to distributions of anadromous salmonids, acorns, and deer. As a result of this complex linguistic geography, local communities – often described as ‘tribelets’ in the ethnographic literature – were surrounded by groups speaking related and non-related languages. Some workers have argued that the origins of these complex small-scale language distributions lay first in a series of population movements into the region, the most recent wave being the arrival of Na-Dene speakers from the North, and secondly in the need for communities to maintain control over key resource points (eg, fishing sites and acorn groves), with language functioning as a form of boundary defence mechanism (cf Jorgensen 1980). Nevertheless, the bulk of the ethnographic literature indicates that interaction across these language frontiers remained high and generally friendly in nature, with common marriages and other material exchanges between different communities leading to a significant degree of bilingualism.
