ABSTRACT
Archaeobotanists interested in the processes leading to the development of agriculture in the Near East have recently examined the rich ethnographic record from California (McCorriston 1994; Mason 1995). The mediterranean climate and vegetation of California bear striking similarities to those of the Near East (Raven 1973), and socially complex, densely populated hunter-gatherer societies persisted there until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Of particular interest is the use of native Californian acorn-intensive economies as an analogy for Epipalaeolithic Natufian groups in the Levant. Missing from this discussion, however, is the growing body of archaeobotanical data from recent excavations in California (Hammett 1991; Miksicek 1991; Wohlgemuth 1996a). These data are critical given the distortions in the California ethnographic record noted by McCorriston (1994), and assumptions regarding the associations of grinding tools with particular types of plant foods by some California archaeologists. Erlandson (1991:99), for example, has suggested that Early Holocene coastal southern Californians focused plant-food gathering upon small seeds rather than acorns, not on the basis of recovered plant residues, but on the predominance of the handstone and millingstone complex in early groundstone assemblages. This putative association, and the concomitant view that mortars and pestles were used solely for acorns, has been challenged by ethnographic work (McCarthy et al. 1985) with Mono people regarding bedrock milling stations in the Sierra Nevada. Furthermore, Wohlgemuth (1996a) showed that recent residential sites in northern California featuring abundant mortars and pestles, but lacking millingstones and handstones, contained a well-developed small seed assemblage, while earlier habitation sites with a rich array of millingstones and handstones, but absent mortars and pestles, consistently featured acorn residues. Reliance upon ethnographic data and groundstone tools alone can lead to a distorted picture of native Californian plant food economy. Erlandson (1991) may indeed be right about early southern Californian plant use, but archaeobotanical data are necessary to test his hypothesis.
