T J Braje
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 18529 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | T J Braje |
| NOMBRES | T J |
| APELLIDO | Braje |
| FIRMA | BRAJE T J |
| AFILIACIONES | San Diego State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3138-1665 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 78 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 643 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 78 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2005 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 14 |
Improving elasmobranch baselines in the California Channel Islands through ZooMS and stable isotope analyses
Sharks are among the world's most endangered vertebrates, having declined by over 70% in abundance over the past 50 years—a collapse driven primarily by modern fishing. However, the extent of this impact is difficult to assess without improved records of past species distributions. Zooarchaeological records offer valuable baselines for shark diversity, distribution, and exploitation and provide essential historical context for assessing contempor…
Far from shore
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were a transformative time for ocean ecosystems, marked by overfishing, habitat degradation, and a series of other anthropogenic perturbations. In the northeast Pacific, the creation of canneries from Alaska to Mexico drove commercial fisheries for tuna, salmon, sardines, and other fishes by opening new markets around the world and fishing for or importing fishes from equally distant places. Here, we synthes…
Exploring a Scientific Research Station from a Bygone Era
The northwest coast of Wimaɬ (Santa Rosa Island) has long been a focus of archaeological research, including former Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History archaeologist, geologist, and paleontologist Phil Orr's work from the 1940s–1960s. Orr pioneered the use of radiocarbon dating on the California Channel Islands, built extensive archaeological collections, and constructed a detailed cultural sequence. Here, we discuss the history and status of…
Contextualizing Late Holocene Subsistence Change on California’s Northern Channel Islands
The complex relationship between sociopolitical complexity, natural climatic change, and subsistence strategies on California's Northern Channel Islands has long been a topic of archaeological inquiry. One period of particular interest to researchers is the Middle-to-Late Period Transition (MLT, 800–650 cal BP), during which Chumash hierarchical sociopolitical organization is thought to have solidified. Multiple models of sociopolitical change ha…
Archaeological and stable isotope data reveal patterns of fishing across the food web on California’s Channel Islands
How do human communities integrate within food webs? Studies characterizing the historical flow of energy among people and local environments can yield important insights into managing sustainable ecosystems. Here, we combine zooarchaeological, bulk tissue, and compound-specific stable isotope data from late Holocene Santa Rosa Island to investigate the ecological role of people within a southern California nearshore marine ecosystem. We show peo…
Coring, profiling, and trenching
Archaeologists have long emphasized the importance of large-scale excavations and multi-year or even decades-long projects at a single site or site complex. Here, we highlight archaeological field strategies, termed coring, profiling, and trenching (CPT), that rely on relatively small-scale excavations or the collection of new samples from intact deposits in previously excavated trenches (aka test units or pits). Examples from multiple sites in A…
News and Notes
Boats, Seafaring, and the Colonization of the Americas and California Channel Islands
In a recent issue of California Archaeology, Jim Cassidy (2021. “A Technological Assessment of the North Pacific Seafaring Hypothesis: Informed by California Channel Island Research.” California Archaeology 13 (1): 69–92). provided a flawed assessment of the potential role boats and seafaring played in the initial peopling of the Americas, as well as the nature of watercraft used to settle Santarosae and California’s other Channel Islands. His ar…
Re-evaluating terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene settlement patterns with Chirp subbottom data from around California's Northern Channel Islands
California's Northern Channel Islands contain an incredible record of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation. Since the hunter-gatherer-fishers who created these sites relied heavily on marine resources, a critical aspect of understanding early settlement patterns is calculating distance to paleoshorelines. This has traditionally been accomplished using sea-level curves and bathymetric models that do not account for sediment dep…
The Big Picture versus Minutiae
In a rejoinder to Gill et alia (2021), Martin (2022) accuses us of perpetuating misconceptions about human nutrition and erroneously describing geophytes as a dietary staple. We provide authoritative definitions for the terms 'essential' and 'dietary staple' to show that it is Martin who mischaracterizes and misunderstands the foundational role of geophytes and other plant foods to human diets and subsistence economies in Native North America out…
Cultural Keystone Places and the Chumash Landscapes of Kumqaq', Point Conception, California
The places in which people live and spend time are steeped in history, memory, and meaning from the intersection of daily life, environmental interactions, cultural practices, and ritual. Geologic features, plants, animals, and ecosystems merge with these cultural histories, forming critical parts of the landscape and areas of 'high cultural salience,' or 'cultural keystone places' (CKPs). We identify Kumqaq' (Point Conception) and the surroundin…
Bills of Fare, Consumer Demand, Social Status, Ethnicity, and the Collapse of California Abalone
Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, California's Pacific Coast has been an epicenter of global commercial fishing activities. Decades of intensive harvest, pollution, anthropogenic climate change, and disease, however, have resulted in the collapse of many of the state's most important and profitable fisheries. Much of the research designed to understand the processes and consequences of this crisis of the oceans has focused on production …
Earliest Evidence for Geophyte Use in North America
There is growing evidence for human use of geophytes long before the advent of agriculture. Rich in carbohydrates, geophytes were important in many coastal areas where protein-rich marine foods are abundant. On California's Channel Islands, scholars have long questioned how maritime peoples sustained themselves for millennia with limited plant resources. Recent research demonstrates that geophytes were heavily used on the islands for 10,000 years…
Submerged paleoshoreline mapping using high-resolution Chirp sub-bottom data, Northern Channel Islands platform, California, USA
High-resolution Chirp sub-bottom data were obtained offshore from the Northern Channel Islands (NCI), California, to image submerged paleoshorelines and assess local uplift rates. Although modern bathymetry is often used for modeling paleoshorelines, Chirp data image paleoshorelines buried beneath sediment that obscures their seafloor expression. The NCI were a unified landmass during the last glacial maximum (LGM; ~20 ka), when eustatic sea leve…
Human ecology, paleogeography, and biodiversity on California’s small Islands
The island laboratory concept has long been an important construct in island archaeology, with an emphasis on human biogeography and issues of isolation, connectivity, interaction, evolution, and extinction. The Pacific Coast of Alta and Baja California contains several offshore islands that offer a framework for evaluating a variety of cultural and ecological issues. The California Islands include large islands (>100 km2) with abundant resources…
Fladmark + 40
Forty years ago, Knut Fladmark (1979) argued that the Pacific Coast offered a viable alternative to the ice-free corridor model for the initial peopling of the Americas-one of the first to support a 'coastal migration theory' that remained marginal for decades. Today, the pre-Clovis occupation at the Monte Verde site is widely accepted, several other pre-Clovis sites are well documented, investigations of terminal Pleistocene subaerial and submer…
Historical Ecology And Human Impacts On Coastal Ecosystems Of The Santa Barbara Channel Region, California
Early Red Abalone Shell Middens, Human Subsistence, and Environmental Change on California's Northern Channel Islands
Red abalone (Haliots rufescens) shell middens, a distinctive site type on the California Coast dating primarily to the Middle Holocene, provide important insight into human-environmental interactions and climatic and environmental change. Despite decades of research and debate about why red abalone middens formed and how they relate to past human behavior and environmental change, significant questions persist about the nature of these sites and …
Shorelines in the Desert
In the desert of southeastern California, the geological and archaeological remnants of a once massive lake, Lake Cahuilla, are still visible. One of the most distinctive features marking Lake Cahuilla's relic shorelines is a series of rock fish trap features that, in some cases, stretch across thousands of square meters. These fish traps are severely understudied, and systematic archaeological survey can help scientists reconstruct the dynamic h…
Seventy Years of Archaeological Research on California’s Farallon Islands
The Farallon Islands are a cluster of small islands ∼32 km off the coast of San Francisco Bay. These islands total < 1 km2 in area and lack surface freshwater, but are home to scores of breeding seabirds and seals and sea lions. At least three archaeological projects have been conducted on Southeast Farallon, focusing on the islands’ two known archaeological sites (CA-SFR-1 and CA-SFR-24), both primarily related to an early nineteenth century Rus…
The Four Crowns of the Sea
In spite of their potential significance to early human migrants and maritime foragers, small islands often are overlooked in archaeological research projects in favor of mainland coastal and large island counterparts. One excellent example of this is found off the northwestern coast of Baja California, México. Despite the wealth of data from islands to the north and south, the Coronados Islands, a group of four small islands clearly visible and …
A Paleocoastal Site Complex from Santarosae Island, California
Four recently identified sites from eastern Santa Rosa Island contain flaked-stone artifacts diagnostic of Paleocoastal occupations between ∼13,000 and 8000 calendar years ago. The largest site (CA-SRI-997/H) contains two discrete loci that have been the subject of recent testing and data recovery excavations reported elsewhere. Three smaller, nearby sites are lithic scatters that produced Paleocoastal stemmed points and/or crescents. When occupi…
Working from the Known to the Unknown
Since the collapse of the Clovis-first model of the peopling of the Americas some 30 years ago, there has been growing interest in the Pacific Coast as a potential early human dispersal corridor. With postglacial eustatic sea level rise inundating most New World paleoshorelines older than ~7000 years, however, locating terminal Pleistocene sites along modern coastlines is challenging. Using the distribution and archaeology of subaerial Paleocoast…
Late Pleistocene estuaries, palaeoecology and humans on North America's Pacific Coast
People & Culture in Ice Age Americas
Our acknowledgment to Enrique Capdevilla (Instituto de Historia, CCHS-CSIC) for his invaluable suggestions during the implementation of GIS analysis
From Pleistocene Mariners to Complex Hunter-Gatherers
Human impacts on ancient shellfish
Human acceleration of animal and plant extinctions
Archeology and the Anthropocene
Coasting out of Africa
Fladmark + 40
Forty years ago, Knut Fladmark (1979) argued that the Pacific Coast offered a viable alternative to the ice-free corridor model for the initial peopling of the Americas-one of the first to support a 'coastal migration theory' that remained marginal for decades. Today, the pre-Clovis occupation at the Monte Verde site is widely accepted, several other pre-Clovis sites are well documented, investigations of terminal Pleistocene subaerial and submer…
Years of human predation and size changes in the owl limpet (Lottia gigantea) on San Miguel Island, California
Beads, Bifaces, and Boats
Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites on California's Channel Islands provide evidence for early maritime activity, including the use of seaworthy boats. Numerous early shell middens have been identified, but specific information on the maritime peoples who occupied them is limited. Our research at CA-SMI-608, a roughly 9,500-year-old shell midden on San Miguel Island, produced a relatively large assemblage of bifaces and other chipped st…
Earth Systems, Human Agency, and the Anthropocene
Central place foraging and shellfish processing on California's Northern Channel Islands
Were Hominins in California ∼130,000 Years Ago
In a controversial study published in Nature, Holen et al. (2017) claim that hominins fractured mastodon bones and teeth with stone cobbles in California ∼130,000 years ago. Their claim implies a human colonization of the New World more than 110,000 years earlier than the oldest widely accepted archaeological sites in the Americas. It is also at odds with genetic and fossil evidence for the dispersal of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) o…
Human Impacts on Nearshore Shellfish Taxa
Within the broad framework of historical and behavioral ecology, we analyzed faunal remains from a large habitation site (CA-SRI-147) on Santa Rosa Island to explore a 7,000 year record of coastal subsistence, nearshore ecological dynamics, and human impacts on shellfish populations. This long, stratified sequence provides a rare opportunity to study the effects of prolonged human predation on local intertidal and nearshore habitats. During the p…
Ecology of the Kelp Highway
We explore the ecology of Pacific Rim marine ecosystems and the idea that the broad geographic range of many nearshore food resources facilitated a dispersal of maritime peoples from Asia to the Americas. Geographically, a coastal route offered less ecological resistance than interior routes, providing a linear corridor entirely at sea level and essentially free of major obstructions after about 16,000 years ago. We show that North Pacific nearsh…
Estimating California mussel (Mytilus californianus) size from hinge fragments
Looking forward, looking back
Working from the Known to the Unknown
Since the collapse of the Clovis-first model of the peopling of the Americas some 30 years ago, there has been growing interest in the Pacific Coast as a potential early human dispersal corridor. With postglacial eustatic sea level rise inundating most New World paleoshorelines older than ~7000 years, however, locating terminal Pleistocene sites along modern coastlines is challenging. Using the distribution and archaeology of subaerial Paleocoast…
Evaluating the Anthropocene
The concept of the Anthropocene has become increasingly prominent in recent years, but is it best defined as a geological period or as part of a longer-term pattern of human actions? And when did it begin? Todd Braje launches this Debate feature by arguing for a shift away from definitions and toward an emphasis on the human causes and consequences. This piece is followed by a series of reactions from geologists and anthropologists, with a conclu…
Where were the northern elephant seals? Holocene archaeology and biogeography of Mirounga angustirostris
Driven to the brink of extinction during the nineteenth century commercial fur and oil trade, northern elephant seal (NES, Mirounga angustirostris) populations now exceed 100 000 animals in the northeast Pacific from Alaska to Baja California. Because little is known about the biogeography and ecology of NES prior to the mid-nineteenth century, we synthesize and analyze the occurrence of NES remains in North American archaeological sites. Compari…
An Historic Chinese Abalone Fishery on California’s Northern Channel Islands
Measuring subsistence specialization
How Old is MVII?—Seaweeds, Shorelines, and the Pre-Clovis Chronology at Monte Verde, Chile
Dogs, humans and island ecosystems
Archaeologists have made significant contributions to our understanding of ancient island environments, including the timing and implications of the introduction of non-native animals (pigs, chickens, rats, etc.) by humans. Here, we focus on the historical ecology and biogeography of domestic dogs ( Canis familiaris) on California's Channel Islands during the Holocene. Dogs are the only animal known unequivocally to have been introduced by Native…
Reassessing Human Settlement on the South Coast of San Miguel Island, California
California's San Miguel Island contains over 600 archaeological sites, some occupied as early as 12,000 yr ago and most located along the island's north coast. Archaeologists have long believed the south coast to have been marginal or largely uninhabited. Burial of some landforms by sand dunes deposited after historical overgrazing, the lack of systematic survey, and a dearth of radiocarbon dating have also contributed to an underestimation of th…
Earliest Evidence for Geophyte Use in North America
There is growing evidence for human use of geophytes long before the advent of agriculture. Rich in carbohydrates, geophytes were important in many coastal areas where protein-rich marine foods are abundant. On California's Channel Islands, scholars have long questioned how maritime peoples sustained themselves for millennia with limited plant resources. Recent research demonstrates that geophytes were heavily used on the islands for 10,000 years…
Flightless ducks, giant mice and pygmy mammoths
Explanations for the extinction of Late Quaternary megafauna are heavily debated, ranging from human overkill to climate change, disease and extraterrestrial impacts. Synthesis and analysis of Late Quaternary animal extinctions on California's Channel Islands suggest that, despite supporting Native American populations for some 13,000 years, few mammal, bird or other species are known to have gone extinct during the prehistoric human era, and mos…
Reassessing Human Settlement on the South Coast of San Miguel Island, California
California's San Miguel Island contains over 600 archaeological sites, some occupied as early as 12,000 yr ago and most located along the island's north coast. Archaeologists have long believed the south coast to have been marginal or largely uninhabited. Burial of some landforms by sand dunes deposited after historical overgrazing, the lack of systematic survey, and a dearth of radiocarbon dating have also contributed to an underestimation of th…
From Pleistocene Mariners to Complex Hunter-Gatherers
Beads, Bifaces, and Boats
Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites on California's Channel Islands provide evidence for early maritime activity, including the use of seaworthy boats. Numerous early shell middens have been identified, but specific information on the maritime peoples who occupied them is limited. Our research at CA-SMI-608, a roughly 9,500-year-old shell midden on San Miguel Island, produced a relatively large assemblage of bifaces and other chipped st…
An Historic Chinese Abalone Fishery on California’s Northern Channel Islands
Human Impacts on Nearshore Shellfish Taxa
Within the broad framework of historical and behavioral ecology, we analyzed faunal remains from a large habitation site (CA-SRI-147) on Santa Rosa Island to explore a 7,000 year record of coastal subsistence, nearshore ecological dynamics, and human impacts on shellfish populations. This long, stratified sequence provides a rare opportunity to study the effects of prolonged human predation on local intertidal and nearshore habitats. During the p…
Measuring subsistence specialization
How Old is MVII?—Seaweeds, Shorelines, and the Pre-Clovis Chronology at Monte Verde, Chile
Life on the Dunes
Dogs, humans and island ecosystems
Archaeologists have made significant contributions to our understanding of ancient island environments, including the timing and implications of the introduction of non-native animals (pigs, chickens, rats, etc.) by humans. Here, we focus on the historical ecology and biogeography of domestic dogs ( Canis familiaris) on California's Channel Islands during the Holocene. Dogs are the only animal known unequivocally to have been introduced by Native…
Human impacts on ancient shellfish
AMS Radiocarbon Dating of Giant Rock Scallop ( Hinnites Multirugosus ) Artifacts from San Miguel Island, California, USA
For at least 100,000 yr, marine shell beads have been important ornamental and symbolic artifacts intimately associated with the behavior of anatomically modern humans. In California, giant rock scallop ( Hinnites multirugosus ) beads were once thought to have been used only for the last 1000 yr, where they were considered to be markers of high social status among the Chumash Indians of the Santa Barbara Channel region. Direct accelerator mass sp…
Origins and antiquity of the island fox ( Urocyon littoralis ) on California's Channel Islands
The island fox ( Urocyon littoralis ) is one of few reportedly endemic terrestrial mammals on California's Channel Islands. Questions remain about how and when foxes first colonized the islands, with researchers speculating on a natural, human-assisted, or combined dispersal during the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. A natural dispersal of foxes to the northern Channel Islands has been supported by reports of a few fox bones from late Pleistoce…
Mollusks and Mass Harvesting in the Middle Holocene
Archaeological excavations at California Channel Island sites have produced a history of roughly 12,000 years of maritime subsistence, technological change, human-environmental interactions, and cultural evolution. These excavations provide valuable data on the dynamics of Channel Island nearshore marine ecosystems and the adaptive strategies of maritime hunter-gatherers who foraged, fished, and hunted in them for millennia. In this article, we s…
Comparing Faunal Remains and Subsistence Technology at CA-SMI-507
Data from many early California shell middens suggest that shellfish and plant foods were economic staples that provided early coastal people with a balanced diet rich in calories and complete proteins. Along the mainland coast, fish, land mammals, sea mammals, and birds were all exploited by early foragers, but the dominance of shellfish and plant foods is supported by both faunal and artifact assemblages. Faunal remains from most early Channel …
Seals, Sea Lions, and the Erosion of Archaeological Sites on California's Channel Islands
The Chumash World at European Contact
Years of human predation and size changes in the owl limpet (Lottia gigantea) on San Miguel Island, California
Paleoindian Seafaring, Maritime Technologies, and Coastal Foraging on California’s Channel Islands
Archaeological sites reveal a variety of tools used to hunt marine birds, mammals, and fish 12,000 years ago.
From Asia to the Americas by boat? Paleogeography, paleoecology, and stemmed points of the northwest Pacific
Where were the northern elephant seals? Holocene archaeology and biogeography of Mirounga angustirostris
Driven to the brink of extinction during the nineteenth century commercial fur and oil trade, northern elephant seal (NES, Mirounga angustirostris) populations now exceed 100 000 animals in the northeast Pacific from Alaska to Baja California. Because little is known about the biogeography and ecology of NES prior to the mid-nineteenth century, we synthesize and analyze the occurrence of NES remains in North American archaeological sites. Compari…
Shellfish and the Chumash
Marine resources played an important role in fostering high population densities and cultural complexity among North American hunter-gatherers. In California, several researchers have emphasized the relationship among increases in fishing, marine mammal hunting, the development of more efficient watercraft, and increased sociopolitical complexity. Largely absent from discussions of emergent complexity is the changing role of shellfish in human su…
Conflicts in natural and cultural resource management
California's Channel Islands currently have around 150,000 breeding seals and sea lions (pinnipeds). Driven to near extinction by 20th-century exploitation, many pinniped populations have recovered dramatically under federal and state management and continue to expand in number and distribution. Some of these pinniped populations are damaging or destroying coastal archaeological sites as they establish new breeding and haul-out areas—places occup…
A trans-Holocene historical ecological record of shellfish harvesting on California’s Northern Channel Islands
Flightless ducks, giant mice and pygmy mammoths
Explanations for the extinction of Late Quaternary megafauna are heavily debated, ranging from human overkill to climate change, disease and extraterrestrial impacts. Synthesis and analysis of Late Quaternary animal extinctions on California's Channel Islands suggest that, despite supporting Native American populations for some 13,000 years, few mammal, bird or other species are known to have gone extinct during the prehistoric human era, and mos…
From forest fires to fisheries management
Human-environmental relationships have long been of interest to a variety of scientists, including ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, and many others. In anthropology, this interest was especially prevalent among cultural ecologists of the 1970s and earlier, who tended to explain culture as the result of techno-environmental constraints. More recently researchers have used historical ecology, an approach that focuses on the long-term dialec…
Geography (67 obras) · Archaeology (60 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (44 obras) · Biology (41 obras) · Ecology (35 obras) · Geology (33 obras) · Fishery (29 obras) · Oceanography (24 obras) · History (23 obras) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (23 obras)