ABSTRACT
This chapter presents four case studies that exemplify the current status of archaeological studies of culture contact and colonialism within Alta and Baja California. It reflects a long-term perspective for studying types of encounter, the material innovations produced from contact and colonial settlement in California, and the broader spatial arrangements in which the encounters took place. Archaeological materials, historical documents, oral traditions, and ethnographic data are used to reinterpret past contacts at taml-hye, which were, until recently, largely understood through a controversial archaeological record associated with Drake's 1579 landfall. Traditional analyses emphasize the utilitarian importance of the objects in daily indigenous routines such as foodways, their random collection from the beach as curiosities, or that they functioned as powerful objects with symbolic meaning. The cultural pluralism inherent in pre-contact polities likely laid the foundation for the creation of a culturally and linguistically diverse neophyte community at Mission Santa Catalina, a pattern that has been maintained by their descendants today.
