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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In comparison to other regions of North America, relatively little is known about the late

prehistoric populations of southern California. Initial contact between the arrival of European

populations resulted in substantial depopulation of native groups (Baker and Kealhoffer 1996).

Depopulation occurred years before the area was systematically described. In addition, the

region’s rapid urbanization during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries resulted in

substantial loss of the archaeological record. This loss occurred prior to the implementation of

federal and state cultural resource laws. This legislation began in the late 1960s and early 1970s

with the purpose of enforcing the protection of cultural resources prior to disturbance from

construction activities (Sebastian and Lipe 2009). Since the emergence of cultural resource

management, some progress has been made in generating comprehensive information about the

archaeological record of the region. Over the past 30 years, southern California has witnessed an

explosion of projects resulting in thousands of site records and reports across the region, often

along with massive stored artifact collections. Despite the abundant documentation, a

comprehensive understanding of the region’s prehistory has yet to fully emerge. Archaeologists

are only beginning to have a robust and comprehensive handle on the chronology of occupation,

and currently only have a rough understanding of prehistoric subsistence and settlement patterns

in the area over the course of the last 10,000 years.

In southern California, prehistoric vessel ceramics are a class of artifacts that remain only

partially understood. While fired vessel ceramics are common across most of North America, the

Pacific Coast of North America almost entirely lacks populations that produced ceramics during

prehistory (Dillon and Boxt 2013). Yet, beginning in the region around Long Beach and areas to

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