Recent excavations at two sites located along the coastal margin of the Los Angeles basin revealed three features created as a result of communal mourning ritual during the Intermediate Period (ca. 3000–1000 cal B.P.). Detailed analysis of constituents, structure, and context indicates that formation of these dense concentrations of ground stone implements, unmodified cobbles, other artifacts, and cremated human remains involved deliberate equipment production, sequential implement fragmentation and treatment including burning and pigmentation of items, and secondary interment of incomplete objects and bodies in pits within locales often used for this purpose over many generations. The large size and evident manipulation of objects as part of communal mourning ritual indicates that actions would have been readily visible to a gathered assembly. Thus, while the meaning and significance of these practices remains to be thoroughly explored, the data suggest that communal mourning ritual may have played a significant role in community-building and the maintenance of identity within a region with a dynamic population history.

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Beach sand dredging projects off the coast of Southern California provide data for improved understanding of the stratigraphic setting for early Holocene sediments and the potential for offshore buried archaeological materials. Geophysical data, core sediments, and invertebrate fossils allow models to be developed for six borrow sites within drown river valleys off San Diego County. These site‐specific models were tested during dredging operations, and the dredge spoil was monitored for archaeological materials. Two of the borrow sites yielded stone bowls consistent with those found in previous offshore archaeological investigations in this region. These artifacts, however, were determined to come from nearshore and lagoonal sediments, not appropriate for direct occupation, raising questions about both the function of stone bowls and the process that resulted in their deposition. The competing hypotheses presented are that these bowls originated in settlements located adjacent to the lagoons, but were eroded and redeposited into the lagoon during transgression, or that they were part of a fishing toolkit used from boats or in shallow waters within the lagoon. This project illustrates the potential for commercial development projects to yield information on submerged archaeological resources, as well as the challenges.