Cottrell's doctoral dissertation (1991) proposes that Hokan speakers occupied an approximately 20 km wide coastal strip in southern Orange County at the time of Spanish contact. According to this hypothesis, Shoshonean or Takic speakers were restricted to an inland territory that ended 20 km short of the Pacific coastline. If accurate, this Hokan hypothesis would necessitate a major rewrite of regional prehistory. Most archaeologists accept Kroeber's Shoshonean wedge model which states that immigrating Takic speakers reached the Pacific coast hundreds of years prior to Spanish contact. This critique shows that several crucial ethnohistoric and ethnographic observations of culture and language were not adequately considered in Cottrell's dissertation (1991), and that there are apparent misreads, misinterpretations, and misuses of archaeological and other kinds of data, as well as a general pattern of confirmation bias. The Hokan hypothesis is unsupportable.

When the Spanish colonized it in AD 1769, the California Coast was inhabited by speakers of no fewer than 16 distinct languages and an untold number of small, autonomous Native communities. These societies all survived by foraging, and ethnohistoric records show a wide range of adaptations emphasizing a host of different marine and terrestrial foods. Many groups exhibited signs of cultural complexity including sedentism, high population density, permanent social inequality, and sophisticated maritime technologies. The ethnographic era was preceded by an archaeological past that extends back to the terminal Pleistocene. Essays in this volume explore the last three and one half millennia of this long history, focusing on the archaeological signatures of emergent cultural complexity. Organized geographically, they provide an intricate mosaic of archaeological, historic, and ethnographic findings that illuminate cultural changes over time. To explain these Late Holocene cultural developments, the authors address issues ranging from culture history, paleoenvironments, settlement, subsistence, exchange, ritual, power, and division of labor, and employ both ecological and post-modern perspectives. Complex cultural expressions, most highly developed in the Santa Barbara Channel and the North Coast, are viewed alternatively as fairly recent and abrupt responses to environmental flux or the end-product of gradual progressions that began earlier in the Holocene.

Glassow discusses several "problems" with the use of minimum number of individuals (MNI) in archaeological shellfish analysis, including the difficulty of identifying non-repetitive elements (NRE) to species level for several taxa. However, these problems, especially fragmentation, are more critical for the weight method than for MNI estimates. We have successfully identified thousands of NRE for all species common in southern California coastal archaeological sites. We also suggest that a measure, such as MNI, that provides estimates of numbers of individuals is a more reliable and valid measure with which to address most research questions. The weight method only provides a measure of the weight of some of the fragments from the shells of those individuals.

The scientific/romantic appeal of cogged stones in Orange County prehistory develops from an amalgam of historic, geographic, and aesthetic factors and an enigma surrounding their function. The following article provides a description of a recently excavated specimen that extends knowledge regarding the range of manufacturing materials for cogged stones. Its unusual material, red ochre, offers further support for the hypothesis that similar artifacts functioned in nonutilitarian contexts.

The scientific/romantic appeal of cogged stones in Orange County prehistory develops from an amalgam of historic, geographic, and aesthetic factors and an enigma surrounding their function. The following article provides a description of a recently excavated specimen that extends knowledge regarding the range of manufacturing materials for cogged stones. Its unusual material, red ochre, offers further support for the hypothesis that similar artifacts functioned in nonutilitarian contexts.

Issues of arrow projectile point morphology, chronometrics, and time-space systematics for southern coastal California are addressed using data from the Newport Coast Archaeological Project and the Cypress College Archaeology Program. These data suggest temporal co-variation within the Cottonwood series, with the floruit of the leaf-shaped type preceding that of the triangular forms, but the data do not support the hypothesis that Cottonwood Triangular basal configurations are time-sensitive. Early Cottonwood Triangular and Leaf-shaped point forms in southern coastal California may have evolved as smaller versions of atlatl morphological types found on the coast, possibly preceding the appearance of the Cottonwood series in the Great Basin. Sonoran series points in Orange County appear to date no earlier than the latter half of the Late Prehistoric Period and offer evidence of a link between the Hohokam culture and the coast.

Issues of arrow projectile point morphology, chronometrics, and time-space systematics for southern coastal California are addressed using data from the Newport Coast Archaeological Project and the Cypress College Archaeology Program. These data suggest temporal co-variation within the Cottonwood series, with the floruit of the leaf-shaped type preceding that of the triangular forms, but the data do not support the hypothesis that Cottonwood Triangular basal configurations are time-sensitive. Early Cottonwood Triangular and Leaf-shaped point forms in southern coastal California may have evolved as smaller versions of atlatl morphological types found on the coast, possibly preceding the appearance of the Cottonwood series in the Great Basin. Sonoran series points in Orange County appear to date no earlier than the latter half of the Late Prehistoric Period and offer evidence of a link between the Hohokam culture and the coast.

Investigators in southern California often employ Great Basin and Mojave Desert projectile point chronologies to date their prehistoric assemblages. This approach is tested using atlatl darts from five Newport Coast sites. In an attempt to partition the Orange County Middle Holocene into discrete temporal segments, the projectile points are classified, where possible, using Great Basin and Mojave Desert point typologies. The Middle Holocene occurrence of a great variety of forms, a consequence of rejuvenation and other factors, complicates the effort. No clear, precise temporal markers emerged from the study, and the data do not support the atlatl point chronology proposed by Koerper and Drover (1983). On the basis of these results, it is concluded that Great Basin and Mojave Desert atlatl dart types cannot be applied indiscriminately to projectile points for chronological control in coastal southern California.