Campus: UC Santa Barbara

Instructor: Michael Glassow

Reserves Used:
Santa Cruz Island Reserve
Sedgwick Reserve
Coal Oil Point Natural Reserve

Featured Reserve:
The tremendous diversity of terrestrial and marine resources
in the Santa Barbara region once supported one of the densest Native American populations in California. The 5,896-acre Sedgwick Reserve lies on a travel route between two of the largest Chumash villages in the area. In addition to numerous chert quarries, the reserve includes at least one Middle Chumash habitation site.

Finding a distinctive object, maybe a stone bowl or a projectile point, something that's been manufactured by a human being, really piques the students' interest in archaeology.

-Michael Glassow,
UC Santa Barbara

Anthropology 181 is the first opportunity most UCSB students have to learn the basics of archaeological fieldwork. The class, made up largely of juniors and seniors, visits both the Sedgwick Reserve and the Santa Cruz Island Reserve to experience all phases of an archaeological investigation from survey to excavation and formal documentation.

"We begin with an archaeological survey," explains Professor Michael Glassow, "where we systematically locate relatively level areas of ground, where prehistoric activities could have occurred, and then look for items on the surface that would indicate that something happened there prehistorically. Most of what we have found at Sedgwick is on the upper part of the reserve," he continues. "Chert quarries or scatters of chert flakes, where the Chumash were making and using cutting and scraping tools, are common. Some sites may just be spots where a hunter killed and butchered a deer."

Sedgwick Reserve also provided an excavation opportunity. "A couple of years ago, we worked on a habitation site located on the southern margin of the property," Glassow recalls. "This is a site where people were actually living and where they probably had houses. So we dug a series of test pits, giving the students a chance to learn how we excavate, screen, and document a site. We then brought the material back to campus where we use it as for senior's honors and master's theses."

Prehistoric habitation sites are much more common and easier to identify on Santa Cruz Island Reserve. "There are probably around 3,000 sites on the island," Glassow notes. "Thus far, researchers and classes have documented about 800, so we have a ways to go. Sites on the island are a lot easier to find because people were usually eating shellfish, which they carried as they traveled across the landscape. We find shell middens everywhere, from the interior to the coast. This is a great place to take students if we want to guarantee they're going to find sites they can formally record so we can introduce them to that process."

Glassow believes the class is valuable for all students, even those who don't go into archaeology as a career: "Of course, field-class experience is fundamental for anybody who has a strong interest in pursuing archaeology. But even if they don't have that interest, the students come to understand what archaeological fieldwork is about and gain a stronger appreciation for archaeological endeavor and how we piece together the past."