ANTH 608 - California Archaeology

(3 units)

Evaluation of California’s prehistory and the development of indigenous lifeways from roughly 14,000 years ago to the present. Topics include the region’s natural and human ecology, ethnography, culture history, relationships to Great Basin archaeology, and processes affecting cultural development and cultural change in a region renowned for its population size, linguistic diversity, hunter-gatherer economies, and unique, tribelet-based sociopolitical organization.

Grading Basis: Graded
Units of Lecture: 3
Offered: Every Fall - Odd Years

Student Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. describe the human ecology of California’s major physiographic provinces.
2. describe the lifeways of Native Californians as recorded in the ethnographic literature.
3. analyze the trajectory of change in technological, settlement, subsistence, social, and political behaviors in California from the terminal Pleistocene to the late Holocene/Anthropocene.
4. explain how climate, demography, migration and other factors resulted in trajectories of culture change over time in California.
5. evaluate the roles that environment, technology, and social behaviors played in the development of aboriginal sociopolitical organization in ethnographic California.
6. critically evaluate the way changes in human behavior in California correspond to and operate within ecological and historical contexts.
7. develop and defend their own theoretically and empirically-informed hypotheses explaining an aspect of culture change in prehistoric California.

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