Coastal Settlements
Middle Holocene archaeological sites in San Diego County appear to be located predominantly in coastal settings and characterized by refuse from marine resource exploitation. In contrast, Late Prehistoric sites seem to be more common at inland locations. These observations raise the question as to whether some Late Prehistoric groups focused on coastal resources on either a year-round or seasonal basis.
Claude N. Warren (1968:5, 7) observed that Late Prehistoric sites in the coastal area were “apparently neither numerous nor large.” Warren, as well as D. L. True (1966; True et al. 1974; Warren 1964), suggested that settlement had shifted away from the coast north of Mission Bay to inland areas and to Mission and San Diego Bays toward the end of the Middle Holocene.
Lynne E. Christenson (1990, 1992) evaluated a 20% systematic sample of archaeological site records for the portion of San Diego County that falls within ethnographic Kumeyaay territory west of the Peninsular Range divide. Christenson’s study found that only a small proportion of the recorded Late Prehistoric sites in the region are located in coastal areas. Of 438 Late Prehistoric sites in the sample, only nine (2%) are located in the coastal zone (USGS 7.5-minute Encinitas, Del Mar, La Jolla, Point Loma, National City, and Imperial Beach quads). In contrast, of 188 sites in the sample that were identified as Archaic, 131 (70%) are located in the coastal quads. Christenson’s study showed a slight concentration of Late Prehistoric coastal sites in the San Diego-Mission Bay area as against the open coast farther north, although the contrast was not statistically significant. In her sample, the ratio of Late Prehistoric to Archaic sites for the Encinitas and Del Mar quads is 1:17, while the ratio for the La Jolla, Point Loma, National City, and Imperial Beach quads is 1:12.
Sharon McFarland (2000) analyzed a large sample of obsidian hydration readings according to their provenience in four general geomorphic regions within San Diego County. She found a statistically significant pattern of larger, and therefore apparently earlier, readings in the coastal zone, as contrasted with inland, mountain, and desert zones.
| Zone | Number of Cases | Mean Hydration Reading (microns) | Standard Deviation (microns) |
| Coastal | 162 | 5.10 | 3.31 |
| Inland | 491 | 3.66 | 2.33 |
| Mountain | 169 | 2.54 | 1.22 |
| Desert | 121 | 3.20 | 1.97 |
Two ethnohistorically and archaeologically known sites are conspicuous exceptions to any possible pattern of Late Prehistoric neglect toward coastal locations and resources: Rinconada de Jamo (SDI-5017), near Mission Bay (Carter 1957; Heuett 1979; Winterrowd and Cardenas 1987); and Ystagua (SDI-4513, -4609, and -5443), near Soledad Slough (Carrico 1975; Carrico and Day 1981; Carrico and Taylor 1983, n.d.; Eidsness et al. 1979; Hector 1985, 1988; Gallegos et al. 1989; Rosen 1987; Smith and Moriarty 1983a). Excavations at these sites have found evidence for the processing of shellfish, marine mammals, and fish from bays or estuaries and from kelp beds. The Spindrift Site (SDI-39) in La Jolla has also been cited as an exception to the apparent pattern of a scarcity of major Late Prehistoric habitation sites on the coast (Warren et al. 1961:26).
Whether the archaeological record supports a late-period decline in coastal use in northern San Diego County has been debated. Brian F. Byrd (1998) proposed that data from Camp Pendleton supported a Late Prehistoric intensification in the exploitation of coastal resources. On the other hand, Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, William R. Hildebrandt, and Jerone H. King (2001) argued that intensive use of coastal resources in this area was limited to the later portion of the Archaic period, and that Late Prehistoric coastal sites, such as Donax middens, represent only short-term occupations.
Andrew R. Pigniolo (2005) reexamined Warren’s suggestion that Mission and San Diego bays had served as refuge areas for coastal populations when the resources of the central San Diego coast declined during the Archaic Period. Pigniolo concluded that the shellfish resources available in the southern bays had gone through similar shifts as on the central coast and that the evidence did not support a model of southward migration.
Historical sources seem to document active aboriginal coastal settlements in the Kumeyaay-Diegueño portion of San Diego County (e.g. Carrico 1977; Englehardt 1920; Wagner 1929). Ethnographic sources, although gathered in inland areas more than a century after European occupation of the coast, discuss fishing and maritime resource exploitation (Drucker 1937; Luomala 1978; White 1963).
PROSPECTS
Future archaeological investigations may be able to determine whether potentially available coastal resources declined during the Holocene, whether the various portions of the San Diego coast were occupied by substantial communities on a long-term basis during the Late Prehistoric period, and whether coastal resources made a major contribution to the diet of the region’s Late Prehistoric inhabitants.
(originally contributed by Lynne E. Christenson)