Summary

At the broadest level, the entire prehistory of California is one of steady population growth,

Economic intensification, and technological specialization. But this generality masks a tremendous amount of cultural diversity, as economic systems and technological adaptations were distinctively tailored to local conditions. It is important to recognize that the trends presented above are accurate in their sequencing but highly variable in their timing as well as their expression. Not all of the developments presented above were simultaneous across the state; nor did all of the developments presented above take place in equal intensity everywhere in the state. For

Instance, Milling Stone foragers in the North Coast Range and in the southern Sierra foothills continued to hunt to a degree unknown or impossible in southern California; Central Valley Californians such as the Windmiller began to exploit the acorn hundreds of years earlier than their northern California counterparts, and perhaps thousands of years earlier than those in the southern reaches of the state; and desert hunter-gatherers almost certainly never developed the sorts of wealth distinctions inferred for the San Francisco Bay or the Santa Barbara coast. Regional variations, both large and small, in the nature of resources, of resource timing and productivity, and in local population dynamics have resulted in a range of cultural variability that is unmatched for any California-sized region in the New World (Figure 2). It is this staggering degree of cultural variability, noted in the ethnographic era and demonstrated by linguistic variability, that has thwarted archaeologists’ century-long effort to generate a state-wide chronology and a common culture-historical nomenclature. Despite recognition of a common California Pattern, in the end California’s Native populations defy all but the broadest of generalities.