Thirty-eight (38) artifacts from China (n = 5) and Tulare (n = 33) Lakes were chemically characterized to source and analyzed for their hydration measurements. An indirect means of obtaining such temporal parameters is the use of obsidian tracing and hydration dating. Until recently, no direct dates for the flaked stone materials found at either locality have been published (yet, see Basgall 2003, 2005a, 2005b). The Tulare Lake points appear to be a local variant of this same tradition. The range of variation for these points, typically assigned to the Great Basin Concave Base Series, has not been clearly defined. These projectiles are similar to Clovis points but are often smaller, somewhat thinner, are pressure rather than percussion flaked, and, most often, lack the distinguishing flutes (Rondeau 2005a, 2005b Rondeau et al. Some of these artifacts are basally thinned, Concave Base points (over 500). In Central California, projectile points hypothesized to date from these periods have been discovered in abundance at the Witt locality (CA-Kin- 32) on the southwest margins of Tulare Lake in Kings County in the southern San Joaquin Valley (Dillon 2002, Moratto 2000 Riddell and Olsen 1969 Wallace 1991). Thousands of artifacts dot the fossil shoreline on the desert floor of eastern Kern County at the interface of the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin near Ridgecrest (Davis 1978). A prominent locality for Paleoindian material is Lake China. However, they were also sometimes procured as “heirloom” objects scavenged from earlier archaeological sites and later reintroduced into the archaeological record.Īrchaeological sites within the Great Basin and California appear to demonstrate that human occupation occurred in late Pleistocene and early Holocene times from ca. In addition, new evidence now suggests that the use of charmstones extends for at least 9,000 years into the past. Some charmstones were associated with California Indian weather shamanism. We agree with the researchers who first defined this new type of charmstone that they comprised part of a shaman’s ritual bundle at times and were used in various ceremonies. In this paper, we expand the known geographic distribution of these artifacts and review the nine known examples from California, supplying new information on their age, function, and cultural context. Sometimes fashioned from opaque white quartz, these rare artifacts have been found across a broad swath of California. This paper provides an interpretive overview and synthesis of data on a rare and recently defined type of charmstone―a biconical object, shaped somewhat like an American football. These early accounts adopted the term based on information provided by Native California consultants, who reported that these were “charms” rather than mundane, utilitarian objects. They were described as early as 1885 by Henshaw, while the term ‘charmstone’ first appeared in an article by Yates (1889). Charmstones are some of the more mysterious objects in California’s archaeological record.
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