Transformation of a regional economy: sociopolitical evolution and the production of valuables in southern California

Abstract

Among the most complex and specialized hunter-gatherer-fisher societies in the New World, the peoples of the Santa Barbara Channel region of California were considered exceptional by early explorers because of their intense interest in valuables, beads and trade. During the last several centuries before European contact, sedentary populations on the offshore islands and mainland coast participated in an intensive regional exchange network that emerged from important earlier developments in transportation, craft specialization and labour organization. Especially significant in the sociopolitical evolution of this region were changes in the manipulation of domestic labour by a rising elite, expressed through increasing control over the production and distribution of status-rich valuables and critical resources. At historic contact, the Chumash who occupied the mainland coast and the northern Channel Islands (FIGURE 1) were probably organized into several interlinked small chiefdoms.