Where Early Holocene cultures entered new ecological niches, the Middle Holocene (c. 4000-7000 BP) developed elaborate and innovative strategies and technologies designed to more fully exploit those niches. The Middle Holocene lifestyle gradually came to revolve around gathered plant foods. In most regions, hunting of small mammals surpassed deer and other remaining large mammal species in importance. It is also during this timeframe that evidence is found for the first concerted efforts to methodically exploit the Pacific littoral, especially for shellfish. But particularly noteworthy is that, by the end of the phase, the acorn began to be exploited, around 4000 BP.
The general time frame 4000-7000 BP is here designated as the Milling Stone Horizon, and represents a time when California’s ‘hunter-gatherers’ first became ‘gatherer-hunters’. As the designation implies, Milling Stone sites are dominated by large grinding slabs, basin metates, manos, and significant numbers of hammerstones, choppers and large ‘scraper-planes’, all of which are known ethnographically as plantprocessing tools. Significantly, projectile points and other flaked stone tools greatly diminished in frequency. In coastal regions, shellfish were gathered in great quantities, while parts inland increasingly saw rabbits and other small mammal species supplant deer as the usual target species. Emphasis was on gathering (plants, shellfish) while taking of game appears to have been largely opportunistic. But the Milling Stone is characterized by more than a general shift in subsistence resources: it witnessed significant changes in social and economic organization.
Milling Stone sites suggest increased size of the basic social group. Whereas Early Holocene assemblages suggest at most two or three families in brief residence, and often just a single family group, traveling groups of the Middle Holocene Milling Stone may have numbered 5-10 families or more (20-50 people). In addition, Milling Stone gatherer-hunters appear to have returned time and again to preferred locations, leaving behind at each campsite entire tool kits, or ‘site furniture’. Formal cemeteries with multiple interments first appeared during the Milling Stone and further suggest repetitive and anticipated reoccupation of habitual territories. These sites also record the first significant amounts of ‘nonutilitarian’ items, including shell and bone beads, shell and stone pendants and perforated ‘cog-stones’. Cog stones, also called ‘donut stones’ in view of their size and appearance, often feature the toothed circumference of a gear, and rival the metate as the ‘type artifact’ of the Milling Stone south of Santa Barbara County. Their function is enigmatic, although many archaeologists suspect they are weights for digging sticks or, in delicate examples, symbolic representations of digging stick weights. That a ‘digging stick weight’ should become emblematic of a culture clearly demonstrates the primacy of the collecting strategy in the Milling Stone economy. Evidence from the central Pacific coast (Figure 1) further suggests the primacy of plant gathering, which may have been so important that gender-based division of labor disappeared. In particular, there appear to be no clear gender distinctions in the nature of grave goods or other aspects of human interment. Stereotypical gender divisions may have become obscured in the face of the primacy of plant collection and the diminished role of hunting in the diet.
The statewide pattern of the Milling Stone emphasis on gathering of plant foods is truly violated only in the desert regions of the state, but only in the sense that Milling Stones never outnumber presumptive hunting gear. The timeframe in the desert is referred to as the Pinto Period, named for the Pinto Basin in the eastern Mojave Desert where it was first defined. Nevertheless, Pinto people shared changes in overall organization with their Milling Stone contemporaries, including repetitive site visitation within habitual territories, increased size of the traveling group, and increased reliance on small mammals and plant foods.
Regional synonyms for the Milling Stone include the state-wide designations Middle Holocene and the Middle Archaic Period, the Early Milling Stone and the Encinitas Tradition of southern California in general, the Pauma Culture of inland San Diego County, the La Jolla Period of coastal San Diego and Orange Counties, the Topanga Culture of Los Angeles County, the Oak Grove Period of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, the Borax Lake Pattern of the North Coast Range and, as noted, the Pinto Period in the deserts.
World History
