Anarchy Meets Hierarchy: Sociopolitical Implications of Diachronic Variation in Exchange Indices from Central California’s Pecho Coast

Authors:

Terry L Jones, Christina Hornbaker, Kate Knox, Zoe Levit, Sierra Lyman, Jake Wanzenreid, Brian F Codding

Abstract:

For decades, it has been recognized that Chumash-speaking peoples of the Santa Barbara Channel had a highly complex society that featured sedentism, high population density, craft specialization, and chiefdom-like political authority. Among the material evidence indicating complexity are shell bead production centers on the Channel Islands and sewn-plank canoes. Chumash speakers to the north, including the yak tityu tityu yak tilhini, in what is now known as the San Luis Obispo area, lacked plank canoes and major bead-making workshops, so there has long been certain ambiguity about the nature of their sociopolitical organization and its origins. Here we briefly review the historic evidence for traits of complexity north of Point Conception. Then we evaluate the cumulative archaeological record of obsidian and shell beads from the Pecho coast, including new findings from CA-SLO-585. Patterns in the relative abundance of these commodities show striking differences over time, as obsidian disappears during the Late Period at the same time that beads increase. These trends raise the possibility that territoriality arose during or slightly before the Late Period at Pecho in tandem with hierarchical political authority.

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