Sinposis

"Gamble has pulled together an all-star cast of archaeologists, ethnohistorians, and Native American scholars and challenged them to provide an easy-to-read overview of California Indian life over the last thirteen thousand years. The result is remarkable. Easily understood by the general reader and beautifully illustrated, the volume will capture the imagination and demonstrates the resilience of California Indians in the past and present." _Douglas J. Kennett, Penn State University "This book is an extraordinarily beautiful, state-of-the-art, authoritative, and gloriously and imaginatively illustrated account of Indigenous coastal peoples of California from the earliest archaeological evidence to the present day. All 17 essays, each shorter than ten pages, are successfully written for a broad constituency of readers, including students, Native Californians, general readers, and archaeologists. The collection begins with a one-page chronology of coastal California Indian history, followed by a map of all Native California language groups at the time of European contact and a masterful lead essay by editor Gamble (Univ. of California at Santa Barbara) on `Thirteen Thousand Years on the Coast.' Abundant new research by Gamble and others, including Kent Lightfoot (Univ. of California at Berkeley; `Managing the Land with Fire' and `Shell Mound Builders of San Francisco Bay'), gives cutting-edge perspectives on California prehistory. With its well-selected illustrations and list of selected readings, the book is a stunning gift to general readers and a clarion testimony to the high quality of current scholarship on the Indigenous peoples of coastal California." _W. S. Simmons, Brown University "First Coastal Californians is written for the general public, and it is richly illustrated with black and white and color photographs, maps, and original drawings. The ninth volume in an excellent series on early Americans, it is a wonderful introduction to one of America's most interesting and complex native cultures." _Mark Michel, American Archaeology, Summer 2016 "It is hard to put together a book that is both accessible to the public yet of scholarly interest to practicing archaeologists. In First Coastal Californians, Lynn Gamble and the various chapter contributors have certainly succeeded in this task. Although readers who have been following the archaeological literature in California will be familiar with many of the themes presented, the chapters present informative and up-to-date summaries of a wide range of important subjects that should be of interest to any archaeologist working with hunter-gatherer populations or coastal environments. Most importantly, this volume makes California coastal archaeology both exciting and accessible to a wide range of both specialists and non-specialists. Hopefully, this book will allow many different readers to gain a deeper insight into and appreciation for California's fascinating archaeological past and rich indigenous present." _Mikael Fauvelle, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 36, no. 2 (2016) "This volume provides a general audience with a clear and compelling view of the region's 13,000-year history that will educate and fascinate readers. . . . As a whole, this book provides an impressive synthesis of scientific results, presented in language and format suitable for an educated lay audience. Arresting color plates give the reader a real sense of the history, and the ongoing vibrant cultures of the first coastal Californians. This book has certainly succeeded in its goal of bringing the rich past of coastal California to a format suitable for the public. All the contributors should be lauded for their efforts." _Brian F. Codding, University of Utah, Journal of Anthropological Research, Summer 2017