This project explores how the traditional land and natural resource stewardship techniques developed by indigenous societies over the long term, called “traditional resource and environmental management” (TREM) practices, can benefit multiple stakeholders in our contemporary society. Ethnographic and archaeological research has shown that Native American peoples of California stewarded the natural resources in their traditional territories using a variety of techniques, but the most impactful by far was prescribed burning. In some cases, Native peoples transformed landscapes by changing the fire regime, creating human-maintained landscapes that burned more frequently and at lower intensities. On the Central Coast of California, these practices resulted in the expansion of biodiverse coastal prairies that produced greater quantities of food and browse for humans and animals.

This project took three approaches to improving our understanding of TREM practices and exploring how these practices can contribute to contemporary land stewardship approaches. First, additional archaeological and paleo-ecological research was conducted to improve our understanding of indigenous land stewardship practices at a regional scale. Previous research focused on one particular location near Año Nuevo Point in San Mateo County, California, in order to develop analytical techniques. With the current project, the scope of research was greatly expanded to include locations north and south of the San Francisco Bay, including a total of 16 archaeological sites ranging in age from about 7000 to 150 years ago. Analysis of archaeological plant remains from these sites provided valuable new information on settlement patterning, paleo-ecology, subsistence strategies, and fire history. Multiple archaeological sites in the region showed strong evidence for reliance on grassland food resources during about the last 1000 years, suggesting that prescribed burning may have been carried out at a regional scale since this time. This is a significant finding because it indicates that the highly productive and biodiverse landscape described by early colonizers was not a new phenomenon, but result of a long history of human landscape modification and resource stewardship. The results of archaeological analysis at each location also provided specific information about what types of plants and animals were present in the past, which can be used to guide ecological restoration decisions today.

The second approach involved working with a Native American tribe, the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, to forge agreements with public agencies, non-profits, and for-profit organizations to revitalize TREM practices. In partnership with the Amah Mutsun Land Trust, this project assisted in the development of the Native Stewardship Corps program, which provides paid educational and work opportunities for tribal members. Through this program, tribe members learned about traditional ethnobotanical practices, collected data to assist in ecological restoration experiments, removed exotic invasive species from native habitats, stewarded ethnobotanical resources, reduced fuel loads to decrease wildfire risk, educated members of the public about TREM practices, and carried out archaeological research in the field and laboratory. Through this project, research and restoration work has been carried out on lands managed by California Dept. of Parks and Recreation, the Bureau of Land Management, the California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife, and the National Parks Service, as well as on lands owned by non-profit land trusts, for-profit corporations, and individuals. The success of this aspect of the project demonstrates the value of integrating TREM-based approaches in contemporary land stewardship.

The third line of inquiry involved assessing the quality and quantity of archaeological biological data that has been historically collected in the San Francisco Bay Area region, but which has been underutilized due to a lack of accessibility. Most archaeological work that is performed in the United States is “cultural resource management” (CRM) research, carried out in order to comply with federal, state, and local laws. Due to the sensitivity of cultural resource location information, the results of these studies are confidential information, and they are typically only available to professional archaeologists and Native American researchers. Unlike academic archaeological research, the data from CRM studies are rarely published. This project sought to assess the potential of this less accessible data to contribute to both archaeological and paleoecological research questions. Through performing a comprehensive synthesis of archaeobiological data from CRM reports in a small portion of the San Francisco Bay Area (the Santa Rosa Plain), this study identified a number of serious challenges to synthesizing and analyzing the data. Problems included inconsistency between projects in data collection methods, sporadic and low quality analysis of data, high time investment required to synthesize and standardize data, and poor temporal resolution. Based on these findings, this portion of the project was discontinued. One positive outcome of this aspect of the project was the development of a regional database of archaeological plant remains, containing information from over 1100 samples. With additional work to standardize the data, this may become a valuable resource for regional archaeological synthesis. 

Last Modified: 11/29/2017
Modified by: Robby Q Cuthrell