The Fauna from Quiroste: Insights into Indigenous Foodways, Culture, and Land Modification

Testing phytolith analysis approaches to estimate the prehistoric anthropogenic burning regime on the central California coast

“…Phytolith evidence in the QVCP study converged with archaeobotanical evidence (Cuthrell 2013a(Cuthrell , 2013b, pollen and microscopic charcoal evidence (Cowart and Byrne 2013;Cowart 2014), geomorphological evidence (Cuthrell et al 2013), analysis of faunal remains (Gifford-Gonzalez et al 2013), historical accounts (Cuthrell 2013a), and tree-ring fire-scar evidence (Striplen 2014) to strongly support the hypothesis that anthropogenic fire was frequent and widespread in the valley. Soil samples collected along transects on the Quiroste Valley floor showed very high phytolith concentrations (most sites >1% soil dry weight), dominated by grass phytolith morphotypes (Evett and Cuthrell 2013).…”