Three archaeological sites on California's Channel Islands show that Paleoindians relied heavily on marine resources. The Paleocoastal sites, dated between ~12,200 and 11,200 years ago, contain numerous stemmed projectile points and crescents associated with a variety of marine and aquatic faunal remains. At site CA-SRI-512 on Santa Rosa Island, Paleocoastal peoples used such tools to capture geese, cormorants, and other birds, along with marine mammals and finfish. At Cardwell Bluffs on San Miguel Island, Paleocoastal peoples collected local chert cobbles, worked them into bifaces and projectile points, and discarded thousands of marine shells. With bifacial technologies similar to those seen in Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition assemblages of western North America, the sites provide evidence for seafaring and island colonization by Paleoindians with a diversified maritime economy.

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Rice Ridge (49-KOD-363) is a deeply stratified archaeological site on Kodiak Island, Alaska, with well-preserved faunal remains from three occupations dating to the Ocean Bay tradition. The site contained an extensive bird-bone assemblage analyzed here for the first time. Casperson (2012) studied bird bones from Mink Island (49-XMK-030), also located in Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq territory, and found that birds played important roles in the lifeways of Ocean Bay groups, even though these people have been portrayed as primarily dependent on marine mammals and fish. At Rice Ridge, cormorants, ducks, murres, and geese (among other birds) were vitally important to Alutiiq ancestors, especially during the winter. The relative abundance of birds differs across the three occupations at Rice Ridge, although these differences resist easy explanation. What is clear is that Alutiiq ancestors consumed birds as food and also processed quantities of bird skins for clothing that was crucial to their survival.

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