Lakes and Estuaries Reconsidered: A Comment on Lacustrine Resource Intensification in the Southern Santa Clara Valley, California

The relative value of lacustrine resources to hunter-gatherers, while debated contentiously among Great Basin archaeologists for nearly three decades, has been largely ignored in Cali­ fornia until recent efforts by Hartzell (1992), Basgall (1993), Hddebrandt and Mikkelsen (1993), and HUdebrandt (1997 [diis volume]). In the Great Basin and arid southeastern Califor­ nia, the debate has focused on the value of lakes relative to desert scrub and other xeric environ­ ments. In his article, 77?̂ Relative Importance of Lacustrine and Estuarine Resources to Prehistor­ ic Hunter-Gatherer Populations: A View from Southern Santa Clara Valley, California (diis volume), William Hildebrandt evaluated lakes relative to coastal esttiaries, and challenged a statement I made in 1991 that estuaries and lakes harbor equally valuable resource assemblages, bodi of which would have been attractive to die earliest human colonists of California. While he acknowledged significant variability among lakes and the use of lacustrine resources throughout the soudiern Santa Clara Valley occupational se­ quence, Hddebrandt argued diat die Elkhorn Slough estuary provided a superior resource base for die early inhabitants of central California, and diat lacustrine foods were mosdy relied upon as foci of Late Period subsistence intensification. He ftirther suggested diat estuaries like Elkhorn Slough were important sources of winter foods, and used data from five archaeological sites to project a sequence of progressive lacustrine in­ tensification over die last 4,200 years (i.e., from die Early Period [4,200 to 2,500 B.P.], dirough die Middle Period [2,500 to 1,000 B.P.], and into the Late Period [post-1,000 B.P.]. Early peoples are thought to have largely ignored la­ custrine resources, but during die Late Period, these foods were exploited heavily after access to Elkhorn Slough was cut off to interior peoples due to population circumscription. In an area like the Santa Clara Valley, long characterized by undirected, atheoretical data col­ lection, Hildebrandt's research, as presented in his article and the technical report which pre­ ceded it (Hildebrandt and Mikkelson 1993) stands out as an unequivocally important contri­ bution, and he deserves considerable praise for bringing a meaningful body of data to bear on an interesting, if not significant, anthropological issue. To further thought and debate on the top­ ics of lacustrine/estuarine resource value and sea­ sonality, however, 1 would like to offer an alter­ native perspective on recent archaeological find­ ings from the southern Santa Clara Valley and central Monterey Bay area, and raise issues re­ lated to lacustrine intensification and the seasonal resource value of estuaries. My primary points are that paleoenvironmental causes for apparent transitions are not considered in Hildebrandt's model, and diat estuaries like Elkhorn Slough were most important not for their winter foods, but for their summer fisheries. To make these points, I reinterpret the relatively shallow cultural chronology employed by Hildebrandt and Mik­ kelson (1993) in die soudiern Santa Clara Valley, raise some concerns about sampling strategies appropriate for the characterization of wedand adaptations, and question whedier die vertebrate faunal data reported by Hildebrandt truly reflect lacustrine intensification.