My thesis research evaluated the nature of mobility on Santa Cruz Island, California during the early Holocene (7,500-10,000 BP). Considering arguments that the unique ecological conditions that exist in maritime environments encouraged reduced residential mobility and hastened the development of socially and politically complex hunter-gatherer societies (Binford 1990; Kelly 1995; Maschner 1999), examination of the development of settlement and foraging organization can help clarify our understanding of social and cultural evolution in maritime contexts. Indeed, researchers have focused on the effect that reduced mobility has on adaptations of food storage, trade, territoriality, and social and gender inequality. On the Northern Channel Islands of California, the effects of reduced mobility and the development of complexity have been widely studied with respect to later time periods; however, researchers are just beginning to consider mobility during earlier periods on these islands. While understanding mobility during these earlier periods will not lead directly to determining the causes of social and political complexity, it provides a baseline for understanding the development of adaptations that influence the nature and timing of this complexity and the factors affecting the cultural trajectory of human groups. 

Ecology and resource distribution and abundance are major factors in the mobility, subsistence, and settlement decisions that affect human group development and organization. Recognizing this organization within an archaeological context requires knowledge of the available resources, how these resources are distributed temporally and spatially, and how human groups would be expected to arrange themselves across the landscape to maximize foraging goals. Therefore, the specific goals for this project were to identify resource exploitation, land use, seasonality, and intensity of occupation and the relationship these factors have with paleoenvironmental variables at each known early Holocene site on Santa Cruz Island. Methods for accomplishing this goal included excavation of deposits and analysis of assemblages from all five identified early Holocene deposits on Santa Cruz Island. Excavations yielded artifactual, faunal, and floral assemblages that were analyzed to determine inter-site variation as well as site function, habitat and landscape use, and paleoenvironmental variables.

Results from this study show no significant variation in site function, implying that a more complex, reduced mobility settlement system was not present during the early Holocene on Santa Cruz Island. Locally available resources were a focus during occupation at all sites, and settlement decisions are based on the distribution of important resources across the landscape. Location-specific resources such as fresh water sources and high-quality tool stone were significant factors in settlement decisions at some sites, underscoring the importance of these resources for early island inhabitants. During the early Holocene on Santa Cruz Island, human group decisions appear to have been influenced primarily by environmental factors. Evidence indicative of complex hunter-gatherer societies, such as storage, village organization, and reduced mobility are absent. The absence of these key factors suggest that complex sociopolitical adaptations such as social and gender inequalities, and territoriality had not yet begun to develop and were not factors in human group decisions during the early Holocene on Santa Cruz Island.