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The Little Sycamore Site and the Early Milling Stone Cultures of Southern California*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

William James Wallace
William James Wallace*
Affiliation:
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
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Extract

The Presence in the southern California coastal region of prehistoric cultures showing considerable use of milling stones has been recognized for some years. Attention was called to this fact by the publication in 1929 of David Banks Rogers’ Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast. Rogers distinguished a sequence of three aboriginal cultures in the Santa Barbara area, the earliest of which (Oak Grove) was characterized by the employment of this form of grinding implement almost to the exclusion of other artifacts. In the same year Malcolm J. Rogers noted a somewhat analogous complex (now La Jolla) in western San Diego County (M. J. Rogers 1929: 456-7). Occurrences of similar assemblages have been reported upon since (Treganza and Malamud 1950; Walker 1952).

An investigation conducted at the Little Sycamore site (Ven 1) in Ventura County by a class in archaeological field methods from the University of Southern California uncovered evidence of yet another milling stone complex.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1954 , pp. 112 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1954

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Footnotes

*

The photographic illustrations were prepared by Roger J. Desautels and Edith S. Taylor. Figure 39 was drawn by Desautels. The unmodified mammal and bird bones were identified by Jack Nicoll, major student in anthropology and zoology at the University of Southern California. The identification of stone materials was made by Richard H. Merriam, Associate Professor, Department of Geology, University of Southern California.

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