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Social scientists recognize a complex and iterative relationship between the built environment and social identities. Here, we explore the extent to which household and settlement remains may be used as archaeological correlates of collective identities among the Stó:lō-Coast Salish peoples of the Fraser River Valley. Using data from six recently tested archaeological sites we begin with the household and explore expressions of identity at various social-spatial scales. The sites span the period from 4200 cal B.C. to the late A.D. 1800s and include settlements with semi-subterranean houses of different forms as well as aboveground plank houses. Across this timeframe we see both change and continuity in settlement location, layout, size, and house form. Our data suggest that although group identities have changed over the millennia, selected social units have persisted through many generations and can be linked to present-day identities of the Stó:lō-Coast Salish.

The tension between hierarchy and communalism is a prominent feature of social life in transegalitarian societies. How are hierarchy and communalism combined in these societies? How are they materialized in everyday life? In this paper, we examine the relationship between hierarchy and communalism in the transegalitarian societies of the Northwest Coast of North America. We focus on households, the primary socioeconomic units of the culture area, and on the plank houses that contained them. Despite the apparent contradiction between hierarchy and communalism, we find that in Northwest Coast households with highly developed social hierarchies, communal practices remained deeply entrenched, while in households with weaker hierarchies, communalism was less developed. The relative importance of hierarchy and communalism in daily household life was clearly materialized in the spatial order of plank houses. By simultaneously objectifying both principles, the house may have played an important role in easing the tension between them.

Recent publications debate the origins of the Chumash plank canoe (tomol) of southern California. The timing of its appearance is of considerable scholarly interest because of its significant role in the evolution of sociopolitical complexity among the coastal Chumash, who were among the world's most complex hunter-gatherers. This paper closely considers: (a) what constitutes reliable empirical evidence for canoe making and maintenance; (b) the most current estimate for the date of origin of this sophisticated watercraft (and the empirical foundations for such an estimate); (c) a scenario for the development of the tomol as a complex technological system (CTS) and why credit is appropriately assigned to the coastal Chumash for its development; and (d) the impacts of this technological system on Chumash sociopolitical evolution.

The hypothesis presented by Jones and Klar (2005) that elements of prehistoric Chumash technology and language arrived from East Polynesia is considered. Trans-oceanic diffusion in general should not be rejected out of hand, but in this case it is improbable that it involved East Polynesia. There are substantial differences in the sewn-plank canoes at issue and the compound hooks are of a general form that is not confined to Polynesia. The chronology of East Polynesian colonization is probably too late for diffusion to southern California before A.D. 700. East Polynesian seafaring may have been inadequate to reach the Californian coast. If the explanation is diffusionary, then a source in East Asia is more plausible.

While the prevailing theoretical orthodoxy of North American archaeology overwhelmingly discourages consideration of transoceanic cultural diffusion, linguistic and archaeological evidence appear to indicate at least one instance of direct cultural contact between Polynesia and southern California during the prehistoric era. Three words used to refer to boats - including the distinctive sewn-plank canoe used by Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers of the southern California coast - are odd by the phonotactic and morphological standards of their languages and appear to correlate with Proto-Central Eastern Polynesian terms associated with woodworking and canoe construction. Chumashan and Gabrielino speakers seem to have borrowed this complex of words along with the sewn-plank construction technique itself sometime between ca. A.D. 400 and 800, at which time there is also evidence for punctuated adaptive change (e.g., increased exploitation of pelagic fish) and appearance of a Polynesian style two-piece bone fishhook in the Santa Barbara Channel. These developments were coeval with a period of major exploratory seafaring by the Polynesians that resulted in the discovery and settlement of Hawaii - the nearest Polynesian outpost to southern California. Archaeological and ethnographic information from the Pacific indicates that the Polynesians had the capabilities of navigation, boat construction, and sailing, as well as the cultural incentives to complete a one-way passage from Hawaii to the mainland of southern California. These findings suggest that diffusion and other forms of historical contingency still need to be considered in constructions of North American prehistory.

The Chumash tomol, a sophisticated planked canoe, came into use in the Santa Barbara Channel region of Southern California about 1,500 years ago. It is often assumed that planked watercraft were first developed in the region at about that date. This paper argues, on theoretical grounds, that planked canoes were developed much earlier in Southern California, perhaps as early as 8,500 years ago.

Advanced maritime technology associated with long-distance exchange and intensified resource acquisition has been linked to the development of stratification and greater sociopolitical complexity in the Pacific Rim region. One such example is the emergence of hereditary chiefs among the Chumash Indians of southern California. Plank boats owned by an elite group of wealthy individuals and chiefs were an integral part of an elaborate economic system that was based on maritime exchange. An artifact assemblage associated with the construction, maintenance, and use of this watercraft was identified and analyzed. It included wooden planks, asphaltum plugs, asphaltum caulking, and chipped stone drills. Radiocarbon dates and other relative-dating techniques provide strong evidence that the plank canoe originated at least 1,300 years ago in southern California. This represents the earliest use of this type of watercraft in North America and probably in the New World. The timing of this innovation provides evidence that sociopolitical complexity developed in the region at least 500 years earlier than previously proposed.

Ties between northeastern Asia and northwestern America are frequently postulated but have never been satisfactorily worked out in detail. Forms of subterranean or semi-subterranean houses and of large plank buildings were known in both regions and this fact has been used to suggest northern Asiatic-American relationships. It seems clear that some prehistoric ties did exist between the two regions but their exact nature remains unknown. Fuller data and more careful comparisons are needed and one segment of the American distribution is therefore given below.

Curved, single-piece shell fishhooks are found archaeologically in Oceania, Ecuador, southern Peru and northern Chile, and the Santa Barbara region of southern California. The hypothesis that fish were possible transpacific carriers of these shell fishhooks is examined in the light of recent tuna-tagging research. Tag release and recovery data show that three species of tuna are capable of undertaking long-range migrations. Skipjack tunas are known to migrate from Baja California to Hawaii. Some bluefin tunas have migrated from Baja California to Japan. Albacore, which is believed to consist of a single population in the northern Pacific Ocean, probably circumnavigates the Pacific. A migration model of the northern Pacific albacore population suggests at least one possible transportation route of shell fishhooks between Hawaii and the Santa Barbara region. Heyerdahl has postulated that the association at historic contact in the Santa Barbara region of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook, the frameless plank canoe, and the Polynesiantype cosmogony of the Chungichnish cult is evidence for pre-Columbian transpacific contact. Contrary to his theory, reasons are advanced here to suggest that these traits may instead be fortuitously associated rather than diffused as a complex. R ECENTLY there has been an enlivened interest in culture-element distributional studies as part of the controversy over Polynesian origins and particularly over the possibility that some of the eastern Polynesian islands could have been populated first by American Indians. Most of the evidence in favor of this theory has been presented by Heyerdahl (1952). As one of several traits, the extra-Oceanic archaeological occurrence of curved, single-piece shell fishhooks in the Santa Barbara region of California and on the coasts of Ecuador, southern Peru, and northern Chile indicates to Heyerdahl the likelihood of pre-Columbian transpacific contacts between Oceania and the western coast of the Americas. He cites the Santa Barbara occurrence as possible evidence of visits from Polynesia to the American mainland at the peak of the Maori-Polynesian navigation period in recent centuries (Heyerdahl 1952: 697-705). Even before Heyerdahl, the archaeological presence and association at historic contact of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook with the plank canoe in the maritime Chumash and Gabrielefio cultures of the Santa Barbara region led Kroeber (1939: 44) to suggest possible Oceanic influences in the development of these exceptional California cultures. Heyerdahl does not postulate any necessary historical connection between the Santa Barbaran and South American examples of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook. However, because of its absence in both Indonesia and continental Asia and its archaeological presence on the South American mainland, where its antiquity is presumed to be at least 1000 B.C., he theorizes that the curved, single-piece shell fishhook originated somewhere on the coast of South America before being diffused to Polynesia (Heyerdahl 1952: 698700). Notwithstanding the possibility of one or more centers of independent invention for this fishhook, the striking similarity in form between the widely separated occurrences of this type of hook, particularly between those of the Santa Barbara region and Oceania, strongly suggests diffusion as an explanation for at least part of its peculiar transpacific distribution. Apparently Heyerdahl assumes that the South American forms were earliest because of their simpler form and that the Santa Barbara examples, because of their close parallels with Oceanic forms, were derived from Polynesia. Whatever the history of their diffusion or development, the closest American parallels to the fishhooks of Oceania are those of the Santa Barbara region. Hooks similar to Santa Barbara types (Heizer 1949) are found in Murihiki and the Caroline Islands (Skinner 1942); also, elements in some forms of Hawaiian fishhooks (Emory and others 1959: P1. I) are similar to those of Santa Barbara types. Understandably, Heyerdahl emphasized planned migration of peoples or drifting of voyagers as the modes of diffusion of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook; however, there is an alternative to his interpretation which deserves closer consideration. In his discussion of the origin of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook in the Santa Barbara region, Heizer (1949: 92) suggested that the form might have been introduced there by a live fish bearing a fishhook. In an earlier paper (Heizer 1944: 397) he cited one case of a fish with a metal knife in its body to show that fish were capable of transporting foreign objects in their flesh. Although there is still no proof that fish are capable of transporting