Kent G. Lightfoot’s research while affiliated with University of California, Berkeley and other places

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Publications (67)


Indigenous eco-archaeology: past, present, and future of environmental stewardship in central coastal California
  • Article
  • Full-text available

September 2024

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72 Reads

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1 Citation

Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology

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Alexii Sigona

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[...]

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Kent G. Lightfoot

The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (AMTB) has stewarded terrestrial and aquatic resources in central California since time immemorial. Successive waves of European and Euro-American colonization have sought to suppress and erode AMTB's relationship with land, stewardship, and natural resources. The Tribe has mobilized anthropological and historical ecological data that demonstrate the effect of long-term Indigenous stewardship through cultural burning and other resource stewardship strategies. These Indigenous landscape legacies have influenced ecosystem structure and the sustainability of culturally important species. This paper focuses on the process of bridging archaeological research with contemporary stewardship efforts related to protecting, preserving, and caring for Tribal cultural heritage that exists from a landscape perspective. The collaborative research has helped clarify the record of Tribal relationships with the environment and how those relationships have changed due to colonial land use regimes. In doing so, we highlight how an archaeological research program can be a building point of access to ancestral places, which is a critical step in Tribal-led initiatives of restoring traditional resource management and ecological resilience of plant and animal life on public lands. In addition, we discuss the benefits and limitations of applying eco-archaeological research toward Tribal environmental stewardship.

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Clovis points with distinctive flute or channel flake scar in basal area
S. Byram photo of casts.
Braced weapon bear hunting in Northern Eurasia, 19th century
Pavlov Sokolov. Blavatnik Foundation Leningrad Collection http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b49b7w.
Two views of a reassembled beveled bone rod or foreshaft from the East Wenatchee site [24]; S. Byram photos of cast #P-26, Lithic Casting Labs, Troy, Illinois
Pikes set in “charge for horse” position (based on Smythe [21:f7])
Original drawing, Ronald R. Nelson.
Greek sarissa pikes used in the Battle of Issus, 333 B.C.E.; Alexander Mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii
Berthold Werner, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Clovis points and foreshafts under braced weapon compression: Modeling Pleistocene megafauna encounters with a lithic pike

August 2024

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1,031 Reads

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1 Citation

Historical and ethnographic sources depict use of portable braced shaft weapons, or pikes, in megafauna hunting and defense during Late Holocene millennia in North and South America, Africa, Eurasia and Southeast Asia. Given the predominance of megafauna in Late Pleistocene North America during the centuries when Clovis points appeared and spread across much of the continent (13,050–12,650 cal BP), braced weapons may have been used in hunting of megaherbivores and defense against megacarnivores. Drawing from historical examples of pike use against lions, jaguars, boars, grizzlies, carabao and warhorses we consider the possibility of a fluted lithic pike. Associated osseous rods have been problematic as Clovis foreshafts due to the bevel angle and the apparent weakness of the splint haft when great strength is needed for deep penetration in megafauna hunting. However our review of Late Holocene pike use in megafauna encounters indicates the sharp tip becomes less important after hide or armor has been pierced because compression is sustained. Thus, foreshaft collapse after hide entry may not limit but rather increase the efficacy of the braced weapon. We conduct preliminary static experiments to model a fluted pike that adjusts during compression such that haft collapse and point detachment (when point jams on impact with bone) preserve the fluted biface, beveled rod and wooden mainshaft tip. In addition to Clovis point attributes and association with osseous rods, potential archaeological correlates of Clovis pike use include the high frequency of Clovis point isolates and concentrations of complete points with unbutchered mammoth remains at sites such as Naco in Arizona.



Figure 1. Santa Cruz Coast Study Area.
The Eco-Archaeological Investigation of Indigenous Stewardship Practices on the Santa Cruz Coast

December 2021

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1,509 Reads

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13 Citations

Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology

This paper discusses recent findings from a collaborative, eco-archaeological investigation of Indigenous landscape and seascape stewardship practices on the Santa Cruz coast. Employing a low-impact, fine-grained approach, the research team unearthed evidence for the long-term maintenance of coastal prairies extending back at least 1,200 years. The paper argues that Indigenous communities facilitated the development of this biological community by igniting frequent cultural burns over many generations that greatly enhanced the quantity, diversity, and availability of fire-enhanced plants and animals in their territories. The research team also found evidence for Indigenous stewardship practices that enabled the long-term sustainability of important fisheries of small-schooling fishes and shellfish populations over many centuries. The article by Sigona, Apodaca, and Lopez in this issue discusses in more detail how the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band's partnership in this eco-archaeological program is facilitating Indigenous-led stewardship of terrestrial and coastal resources, the protection of ancestral places, and cultural education programs.



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American Antiquity Ancient Shellfish Mariculture on the Northwest Coast of North America --Manuscript Draft-- Manuscript Number: AQ-D-14-00070R1 Full Title: Ancient Shellfish Mariculture on the Northwest Coast of North America Recent publication in American Antiquity on documenting ancient resource management among hunter-gatherers Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation

March 2020

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239 Reads

While there is increasing recognition among archaeologists of the extent to which non-agricultural societies have managed their terrestrial ecosystems, the traditional management of marine ecosystems has been largely ignored. In this paper, we bring together Indigenous ecological knowledge, coastal geomorphological observations, and archaeological data to document how Northwest Coast First Nations cultivated clams to maintain and increase productivity. We focus on "clam gardens", walled intertidal terraces constructed to increase bivalve habitat and productivity. Our survey and excavations of clam gardens in four locations in British Columbia provides insights into the ecological and social context, morphology, construction, and the first reported ages of these features. These data demonstrate the extent of traditional maricultural systems among coastal First Nations, and coupled with previously collected information on terrestrial management, challenges us to broaden our definition of "forager" as applied to Northwest Coast peoples. This study also highlights the value of combining diverse kinds of knowledge, including archaeological data, to understand the social and ecological contexts of traditional management systems.


Seventy Years of Archaeological Research on California’s Farallon Islands

July 2019

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948 Reads

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1 Citation

California Archaeology

The Farallon Islands are a cluster of small islands ∼32 km off the coast of San Francisco Bay. These islands total < 1 km² in area and lack surface freshwater, but are home to scores of breeding seabirds and seals and sea lions. At least three archaeological projects have been conducted on Southeast Farallon, focusing on the islands’ two known archaeological sites (CA-SFR-1 and CA-SFR-24), both primarily related to an early nineteenth century Russian fur trade hunting camp with no evidence of prehistoric human occupation. Little has been published on these expeditions despite their implications for understanding colonialism and culture contact, historical ecology, and the history of San Francisco. We synthesize the history of archaeological research on the Farallon Islands. We discuss the artifacts and faunal remains recovered from these projects, the state of the collections, and how these data articulate with broader California archaeology and the archaeology of small islands.





Citations (46)


... Many Corridor fluted and basally thinned points have blade margin inflections and angled flaking indicating tip repair. Similarly, experimentation has suggested that fluting may redistribute stresses on fluted points, encouraging more readily repaired breakage at the base (Ives et al. 2019;Story et al. 2019;Thomas et al. 2017; see also Byram, Lightfoot, and Sunseri 2024). Logically, frequent repairs to bases could be expected to contribute to greater degrees of basal concavity or v-shapes as a consequence of a tool's biography -other characteristics of many Corridor fluted and basally thinned points (Ives et al. 2019). ...

Reference:

Parsing Fluted Point Technological Variability in the South-Central Ice-Free Corridor
Clovis points and foreshafts under braced weapon compression: Modeling Pleistocene megafauna encounters with a lithic pike

... To this end, community and government collaboration programs have been initiated to empower primary data on study sites, particularly shell midden sites (Rick, 2023). Even today, there has been a movement to involve local communities in archaeological research on shell middens at the world level, such as in the Amah Mutsun tribe in central California (Lightfoot et al., 2021). This will directly educate the community on valuing heritage sites and protecting them from being threatened with destruction (Rick, 2023). ...

The Eco-Archaeological Investigation of Indigenous Stewardship Practices on the Santa Cruz Coast

Journal of California and Great Basin anthropology

... This frequent fire history is typically attributed to ignitions associated with lightning strikes and the dry summer California climate; however, there is a vast literature documenting Indigenous use of low-intensity surface fires to tend and promote terrestrial resources throughout California (M. K. Anderson 2005; Cuthrell et al. 2012;Knight et al. 2022). Modern prescribed fires essentially mimic the behavior of Indigenous burning practices. ...

A Land of Fire: Anthropogenic Burning on the Central Coast of California
  • Citing Chapter
  • June 2016

... Despite being connected to the mainland until about 11,000 years ago and being the western edge of a formerly exposed valley, no prehistoric sites have been identified on the Farallon Islands (Riddell 1955;Wake and Graesch 1999;Rick et al. 2019). The Farallones have seen limited archaeological attention, with just three archaeological projects on the island, all of which focused on Historic period occupation. ...

Seventy Years of Archaeological Research on California’s Farallon Islands

California Archaeology

... Other researchers, confronted with the inability of so many societies that exhibited elements of both egalitarianism and hierarchy to neatly fit within either the alpha (egalitarian) or omega (hierarchical) categories, took a different tack by retaining egalitarianism and hierarchy at both ends of the spectrum and lumping the rest in an intermediate category variously termed transegalitarian (e.g., Blake, 1989, 1994;Hayden, 1995), middle range societies (e.g., Feinman and Neitzel, 1984;Lightfoot and Upham, 1989), etc. However, here again, as previously noted by Spielmann (1994), the fly in the ointment is the great variability inherent in the cases that actually fall within these intermediate categories. ...

Complex Societies in the Prehistoric American Southwest: A Consideration of the Controversy
  • Citing Chapter
  • June 2019

... spans a period with marked evidence for cultural change, from the Middle Period to Middle to Late Transition Period (Groza et al. 2011;Milliken et al. 2007;Schwitalla et al. 2014). This site also spans part of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (800-1200 CE), a period of marked global droughts that were especially notable in California's past (Ingram and Malamud-Roam 2013;Lightfoot and Luby 2002). ...

Late Holocene in the San Francisco Bay Area:: Temporal Trends in the Use and Abandonment of Shell Mounds in the East Bay
  • Citing Chapter
  • July 2003

... Many of the pressing research questions in present-day archaeological discourse are being addressed with the archaeological record of the western coast of North America. This includes information about the timing and route of the initial colonization of the Americas (e.g., Fladmark 1979;Erlandson 2002;Des Lauriers 2006;Erlandson et al. 2007Erlandson et al. , 2011Des Lauriers et al. 2017;Braje et al. 2020), the origins of social complexity among huntergatherer-fishers (e.g., Arnold 1992Arnold , 2001Ames 1994;Kennett 2005;Gamble 2017;Jazwa et al. 2019), and humanenvironmental dynamics in coastal ecosystems (Erlandson and Moss 2001;Kennett 2005;Erlandson and Rick 2010;Whitaker and Byrd 2014;Colligan, Whitaker, and Hildebrandt 2015;Sanchez et al. 2018). In particular, the Baja California peninsula has received increasing attention for prominent long-term projects along both coastlines, namely in the La Paz area of the Gulf Coast, including Espíritu Santo Island (e.g., Fujita and Poyatos de Paz 1998;Fujita 2002Fujita , 2010Fujita , 2014Fujita and Bulhusen Muñoz 2014;Fujita and Melgar 2014;Fujita, Cáceres-Martínez, and Ainis 2017;), on Cedros Island (e.g., Des Lauriers 2006Des Lauriers et al. 2017) off the Pacific Coast, and the Pacific coastal areas of the northern parts of the peninsula, where extensive archaeological investigations led by the Instituto Nacional Antropología e Historia (INAH) have focused on the Tijuana-Rosarito area (Berkovich 1997;Cuadra 2018;Fonseca and Zarco 2022), Bajamar (Hernández and Schoerberg 1993;Serrano 1993;Reina 1995;Ovilla and García 2008;Drakíc and Delgado 2010;Fonseca 2017), Punta Banda (Berkovich 1997;Cuadra 2009), Eréndira (Gruhn and Bryan 2009), San Quintín (Moore 2010;Guía-Ramírez, Oviedo-García, and Pacheco 2013;Fonseca 2018;López et al. 2018), and El Rosario (Fonseca, Lara, and Limón 2017;Fonseca and Fenoglio 2020;Fonseca and Zarco 2023). ...

The historical ecology of central California coast fishing: Perspectives from Point Reyes National Seashore

Journal of Archaeological Science

... Buried linear adobe wall features appearing in GPR transect profiles are most evident when perpendicular to the transect, though oblique ( Figure 19) and parallel crossings ( Figure 20) are also informative, but sometimes less clearly identified. An archaeological GPR survey of the Mission Sonoma northern area is discussed in detail in a more extensive and comparative approach to geophysical interpretation at the site [23]. The partnership between State Parks, UC Berkeley, and the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria tested the hypothesized extension of mission-era architecture beyond the current wall around park buildings. ...

Geophysical Investigation of Mission San Francisco Solano, Sonoma, California
  • Citing Article
  • July 2018

Historical Archaeology

... Panich 2014; Silliman and Witt 2010). Such studies seek to balance an awareness of the global aspects of imperial and colonial processes (Cobb 2019;Panich and Gonzalez 2021, 3) with the nuances of Indigenous consumption of foreign commodities within local histories of intercultural encounters (Jordan 2016;Lightfoot and Gonzalez 2018;Panich 2013Panich , 2014. ...

THE STUDY of SUSTAINED COLONIALISM: AN EXAMPLE from the KASHAYA POMO HOMELAND in NORTHERN California
  • Citing Article
  • May 2018

American Antiquity

... The spatial scales employed in these analyses, however, are less appropriate for examining intensification of land use and food procurement in the Valley of Oaxaca before and after the foundation of Monte Albán with a focus on the city and its immediate hinterland. For the present analysis we examine the relationship between changing population and agrarian resources using 10-km-radius circles-a distance easily traversed in a day's round-trip on foot (e.g., Lightfoot, 1979;Drennan, 1984). Without beasts of burden or wheeled transport in prehispanic Mesoamerica, there were limits on how far food could be transported. ...

Food Redistribution Among Prehistoric Pueblo Groups
  • Citing Article
  • January 1979

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