Baja
California's long prehistory is attested by innumerable shell middens
lining its coasts, rock art panels hidden in mountain canyons, hunting
blinds, rock quarries, burial caves, temporary camps, and village sites.
Radiocarbon dates confirm that the region has been occupied since the
end of the Ice Age, and more controversial claims would put the human
presence still earlier.
Pioneering archaeologists attempted to organize information about prehistory
by distinguishing complexes, or groups of traits peculiar to particular
spans of time and geographical regions. Many of the complexes recognized
in Baja California are extensions of patterns first defined elsewhere
in western North America, such as the early Holocene San Dieguito complex
with its stone bifaces, scraping tools, and crescents; the middle Holocene
La Jolla complex, notable for extensive shell middens and seed grinding
tools; the successive Pinto and Gypsum complexes, containing distinctive
large projectile point styles associated with desert adaptations; and
the late prehistoric Yuman complex, with pottery and small arrowpoints.
Other patterns are specific to the peninsula, including the Comondú
complex of central Baja California and the Las Palmas burial complex in
the Cape Region.
Rock art is undoubtedly the most studied class of archaeological evidence
in Baja California. Best known are the spectacular Great Mural pictograph
sites in the mountains of the central peninsula, with their larger-than-life
profiles of men and women, deer, and other animals. Pictograph and petroglyph
sites in a wide variety of styles are also documented from the cape to
the northern frontier. Numerous studies have described these rock art
panels, discussed their settings and associations, interpreted their techniques
and arrangements, attempted to work out their chronologies, and speculated
on their functions. The corpus of careful records has grown, but few interpretations
are as yet solidly established.
Other investigators are attempting to work out the strategies for subsistence
and the patterns of seasonal movements between coasts and interior characteristic
of various prehistoric populations. Key issues in ongoing archaeological
studies also include the question of whether aboriginal Baja Californians
were very "primitive", as early observers suggested, or had developed
elaborate and successful adaptations to a uniquely challenging environment;
whether their lifeways generally remained stable, or changed through prehistory;
and whether various portions of the peninsula received significant influences
from outside, or were essentially isolated.
In comparison with some other regions, only a limited amount of work
has as yet been completed toward inventorying and interpreting Baja California's
archaeological sites. However, during recent years there has been a considerable
growth in investigations by both Mexican and international researchers.
For reviews of studies up to the 1980s, see García Uranga 1988
and Laylander 1992 in the Bibliography. For some of the more extensive
investigations, see the reports by Harry Crosby, Barbro Dahlgren, Emma
Lou Davis, Léon Diguet, Harumi Fujita, María de la Luz Gutiérrez,
Enrique Hambleton, Justin R. Hyland, Ken Hedges, William C. Massey, Clement
W. Meighan, Jerry Moore, Eric W. Ritter, and Donald R. Tuohy.
© 2002 Don Laylander
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