ANIMAL CEREMONIALISM IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHAEOLOGY

ANIMAL CEREMONIALISM IN CENTRAL CALIFORNIA IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHAEOLOGY By ROBERT F. HEIZER and GORDON W. HEWESl C ALIFORNIAN ethnological literature is replete with descriptions of ceremonial observances and treatments accorded various animals, living and dead. Notwithstanding the fact that special attitudes have ap­ parently. been developed by all peoples toward their local faunas, it appears that in California this phenomenon has been emphasized and specialized into what certain ethnographers have called cults. This general aspect of Californian ethnography has been recognized by numerous investigators. 2 Certain recently excavated archaeological sites in Central California have revealed evidence of ritual post-mortem treatment of animals. It is the purpose of this paper to determine whether and ·to what extent these may be interpreted through the application of ethnographic data. Californian culture has long been pointed out as a unique example of cultural conservatism. Historical reconstructions, using ethnographic data as a point of departure, have heretofore been limited to the extent that they had little archaeological evidence of physical and cultural types with which they might effect a correlation. This simple, uniform culture, assumed to have persisted in essentially the same form from earliest times to the present day, was the background against which the ethnographic culture was pro­ jected. The archaeology of the last few years, however, has been able to establish definitely a succession of physical and cultural types in Central California. 3 Early Sacramento, so far the oldest culture discernible in the central valley, occurs in highly compacted calcareous midden sites now almost submerged in the alluvium of this overflow region. Most striking in this horizon are burials fully extended, face down, heads oriented invariably to the west; the skulls are dolichocephalic, and the bones are permineral­ ized. Cremation is absent. Certain types of shell beads, bone and stone ob­ jects, are distinctive; the slab metate seems to be the characteristic grinding implement. In less calcareous and less compacted middens, and more widely distributed, the Transitional culture presents features linking it with the 1 The authors are indebed to the following for infonnation: J. B. Lillard, Franklin Fenenga and E. B. Niehaus of Sacramento, and to Dr Ann Gayton for unpublished Yokuts notes. 2 See especially: Merriam, 1908; Gifford, 1916, 1926; Barrett, 1917; Kroeber, 1925; Gayton, 1930. 2 Heizer and Fenenga, 1939. In this paper will be found a full description of the three cul­ tural horizons. See also, Lillard and Purves, 1937; Heizer, 1939; Kroeber, 1936, 1938; Lilliard, Heizer, and Fenenga, 1939.