Download or read book The Record of Native People on Gulf of California Islands written by Thomas Bowen and published by ASM Archaeological. This book was released on 2009 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last century historians and anthropologists interested in northwestern Mexico knew that Indians had inhabited four large islands in the Gulf of California. Since 1900 ethnohistorical and archaeological research has expanded knowledge of Indians on both sides of the Gulf. Much of that information pertains to the people living on the peninsula and mainland, and touches only incidentally on the islands. In this volume, Thomas Bowen presents historical and archaeological evidence for human use of 32 major Gulf islands. Native people may have played a significant role in shaping island ecosystems. Chronological data from the southern Gulf establishes a time depth for native people of ten millennia. New information from Seri oral history indicates Seri voyages far beyond Isla Tiburón, and Bowen shows the traditional assumption -- that most islands were beyond the range of native people – is wrong. Indians knew and exploited nearly every significant island in the Gulf. Bowen’s work touches on the question of initial human entry into the Americas. The Gulf may occupy a pivotal position in human dispersal in the Americas, and it is possible that evidence of this process has been preserved on some Gulf islands.
Download or read book Unknown Island written by Thomas Bowen and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His own archaeological investigations try to determine whether San Esteban was in fact inhabited permanently by a distinct Seri population or was visited intermittently by Seri from neighboring islands. The author illustrates his narrative with historical and contemporary photographs and detailed maps of the Gulf of California and San Esteban Island."--Jacket.
Download or read book On Desert Shores written by Thomas Bowen and published by . This book was released on 2022-04-29 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hot, arid, and uninhabited, the western Midriff Islands lie in the Gulf of California, surrounded by an often treacherous sea. Given these conditions, why would ancient people go there, and why would anybody go there today? Thomas Bowen addresses these questions in the first comprehensive history of these islands. Bowen draws on a wide range of sources, including the first archaeological field work ever conducted on the islands, written accounts dating back to the sixteenth century, oral histories of native people, contemporary interviews, and his own firsthand experiences. Among those cast in the islands' historical drama are the Seri (Comcaac) people of Sonora, the extinct Cochimís of Baja California, Spanish explorers, Jesuit missionaries, pearl fishers, egg collectors, guano miners, hydrographers, cartographers, small-scale Mexican fishermen, recreational anglers, writers, photographers, ecotourists, shipwreck victims, and, most importantly, scientists. The final chapter documents the impact of this human activity on the islands' ecosystems and examines conservation efforts now underway. Compelling and richly illustrated, this broadly based work provides a unique picture of these extraordinary islands.
Download or read book Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago written by Richard Stephen Felger and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The desert islands of the Gulf of California are among the world's best-preserved archipelagos. The diverse and unique flora, from the cardón forests of Cholludo to the agave-dominated slopes of San Esteban remain much as they were centuries ago, when the Comcaac (Seri people) were the only human presence in the region. Almost 400 plant species exist here, with each island manifesting a unique composition of vegetation and flora. For thousands of years, climatic and biological forces have sculpted a set of unparalleled desert worlds. Plant Life of a Desert Archipelago is the first in-depth coverage of the plants on islands in the Gulf of California found in between the coasts of Baja California and Sonora. The work is the culmination of decades of study by botanist Richard Felger and recent investigations by Benjamin Wilder, in collaboration with Sr. Humberto Romero-Morales, one of the most knowledgeable Seris concerning the region's flora. Their collective effort weaves together careful and accurate botanical science with the rich cultural and stunning physical setting of this island realm. The researchers surveyed, collected, and studied thousands of plants—seen here in meticulous illustrations and stunning color photographs—providing the most precise species accounts of the islands ever made. To access remote parts of the islands the authors worked directly with the Comcaac, an indigenous community who have lived off marine and terrestrial life in this coastal desert region for centuries. Invaluable information regarding indigenous names and distributions are an intrinsic part of this work. The flora descriptions are extraordinarily detailed and painstakingly crafted for field biologists. Conservationists, students, and others who are interested in learning about the natural wealth of the Gulf of California, desert regions, or islands in general are sure to be captivated by this rich and fascinating volume.
Download or read book A Sea Full of Turtles written by Bill Streever and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-07-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inspired and impassioned story of adventure that explores the richness of marine life and charts a path of resilience and hope. Everyone alive today is witnessing a mass extinction event caused by the more than eight billion humans who share this planet. At times, it seems there is little hope. Climate change, resource exploitation, agrochemicals, overfishing, plastics, dead zones in our oceans, drought and desertification, conversion of habitat to housing, farming, and industrial infrastructure—the list of impacts and insults goes on and on. We are, it seems, on an unalterable path that will continue to decimate biodiversity. A feeling of hopeless, while not unwarranted, is part of the problem. Without hope, without some belief in the possibility of positive outcomes, the fight for nature is over. Why even try if the battle is already lost? While staring the problems squarely in the face, A Sea Full of Turtles offers hope for those who care about our living world. Delivered as a travel narrative set in Mexico’s Gulf of California (Sea of Cortez), at one level the book focuses on dramatically underfunded but highly successful efforts to protect sea turtles. But the book goes beyond Mexico and beyond sea turtles to look at how some humans have changed their relationship with nature—and how that change can one day end the extinction crisis. Enchanting, galvanizing, and brimming with joy and wonder, A Sea Full of Turtles will inspire immediate action to face the great challenges that lie ahead. Pessimism is the lazy way out. Optimism, it turns out, is both a reasonable and an essential attitude for us all as we fight for the beautiful diversity of life on our Earth.
Download or read book Marking the Land written by William A Lovis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.
Download or read book Shells on a Desert Shore written by Cathy Moser Marlett and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2014-06-12 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Mexico’s western Sonoran Desert along the Gulf of California is a place made extraordinary by the desert solitude, the dynamic sea, and the people who live there—the Seris. Central to the lives of these people are the sea and its shores. Shells on a Desert Shore describes the Seri knowledge of mollusks and includes names, folklore, history, uses, and much more. Cathy Moser Marlett’s research of several decades, conducted in the Seri language, builds on work begun in 1951 by her parents, Edward and Becky Moser. The language, spoken by fewer than a thousand people today, is considered endangered. Marlett presents what she has learned from Seri consultants over recent decades and also draws from her own childhood experiences while living in a Seri village. The information from the people who had lived as hunter-gatherers provides a window into a lifestyle no longer recalled from personal experience by most Seris today—and perhaps a window into the lives of other peoples who made the Gulf’s shores their home. The book offers a wealth of information about Seri history, as well as species accounts of more than 150 mollusks from the Seri area on the central Gulf coast. Chapters describe how the people ate mollusks or used them medicinally, how the mollusks were named, and how their shells were used. The author provides several hundred detailed drawings and photographs, many of them archival. Shells on a Desert Shore is a fresh, original presentation of a significant part of the Seri way of life. Unique because it is written from the perspective of a participant in the Seri culture, the book will stand as a definitive, irreplaceable work in ethnography, a time capsule of the Seri people and their connection to the sea.
Download or read book Ethnobiology for the Future written by Gary Paul Nabhan and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-05-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnobiology holds a special place in the hearts and minds of many because of its dedication to celebrating the knowledge and values of some of the most distinctive cultural practices in some of the most distinctive places on Earth. Yet we live in a world of diminishing natural and linguistic diversity. Whether due to climate change or capitalism, homogeneity is trumping the once-resplendent heterogeneity all around us. In this important new collection, Gary Paul Nabhan puts forth a call for the future not only of ethnobiology but for the entire planet. He articulates and broadens the portfolio of ethnobiological principles and amplifies the tool kit for anyone engaged in the ethnobiosphere, those vital spaces of intense interaction among cultures, habitats, and creatures. The essays are grouped into a trio of themes. The first group presents the big questions facing humanity, the second profiles tools and methodologies that may help to answer those questions, and the third ponders how to best communicate these issues not merely to other scholars, but to society at large. The essays attest to the ways humans establish and circumscribe their identities not only through their thoughts and actions, but also with their physical, emotional, and spiritual attachments to place, flora, fauna, fungi, and feasts. Nabhan and his colleagues from across disciplines and cultures encourage us to be courageous enough to include ethical, moral, and even spiritual dimensions in work regarding the fate of biocultural diversity. The essays serve as cairns on the critical path toward an ethnobiology that is provocative, problem-driven, and, above all, inspiring.
Download or read book Inside Dazzling Mountains written by David L. Kozak and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside Dazzling Mountains provides fresh new translations of Native oral literatures of the Southwest, a region of vital and varied cultures and languages. The collection features songs, stories, chants, and orations from the four major language groups of the Southwest: Yuman, Nadíne (Apachean), Uto-Aztecan, and Kiowa-Tanoan. It combines translations of recordings made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with a rich array of newly recorded and produced materials, attesting to the continued vitality and creativity of contemporary Native languages in the Southwest. For southwestern linguistic and cultural traditions to be more widely recognized and appreciated, retranslations of older works have been sorely needed. Original translations were often flawed and culturally biased and made use of literary conventions that were familiar to Anglo-Americans but foreign to the Native tribes themselves. Inside Dazzling Mountains corrects these flaws and celebrates the diversity of Native languages spoken in the Southwest today. Skillfully edited and translated by David L. Kozak, who offers a wealth of editorial tools for interpreting songs, song sets, myths, stories, and chants of the Southwest, past and present, this volume contributes to the continued vitality and cultural complexity of the region.
Download or read book Unknown Island written by Thomas Bowen and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seri Indian oral history describes an extinct band of Seris who lived on San Esteban Island in the Gulf of California, yet nowhere are they mentioned in European records. This ethnohistorical study explains how these isolated folk escaped European notice.
Download or read book Islands through Time written by Todd J. Braje and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-11-06 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the remarkable history of one of the jewels of the US National Park system California’s Northern Channel Islands, sometimes called the American Galápagos and one of the jewels of the US National Park system, are a located between 20 and 44 km off the southern California mainland coast. Celebrated as a trip back in time where tourists can capture glimpses of California prior to modern development, the islands are often portrayed as frozen moments in history where ecosystems developed in virtual isolation for tens of thousands of years. This could not, however, be further from the truth. For at least 13,000 years, the Chumash and their ancestors occupied the Northern Channel Islands, leaving behind an archaeological record that is one of the longest and best preserved in the Americas. From ephemeral hunting and gathering camps to densely populated coastal villages and Euro-American and Chinese historical sites, archaeologists have studied the Channel Island environments and material culture records for over 100 years. They have pieced together a fascinating story of initial settlement by mobile hunter-gatherers to the development of one of the world’s most complex hunter-gatherer societies ever recorded, followed by the devastating effects of European contact and settlement. Likely arriving by boat along a “kelp highway,” Paleocoastal migrants found not four offshore islands, but a single super island, Santarosae. For millennia, the Chumash and their predecessors survived dramatic changes to their land- and seascapes, climatic fluctuations, and ever-evolving social and cultural systems. Islands Through Time is the remarkable story of the human and ecological history of California’s Northern Channel Islands. We weave the tale of how the Chumash and their ancestors shaped and were shaped by their island homes. Their story is one of adaptation to shifting land- and seascapes, growing populations, fluctuating subsistence resources, and the innovation of new technologies, subsistence strategies, and socio-political systems. Islands Through Time demonstrates that to truly understand and preserve the Channel Islands National Park today, archaeology and deep history are critically important. The lessons of history can act as a guide for building sustainable strategies into the future. The resilience of the Chumash and Channel Island ecosystems provides a story of hope for a world increasingly threatened by climate change, declining biodiversity, and geopolitical instability.
Download or read book California History for Kids written by Katy Duffield and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of the people who settled and built the Golden State and includes a timeline of significant events, a list of historic sites to visit, and Web resources.
Download or read book Aboriginal Navigation Off the Coasts of Upper and Baja California written by Robert Fleming Heizer and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Mexico Historical Review written by Lansing Bartlett Bloom and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Never an Island written by Ward M. Mcafee and published by Wildside Press LLC. This book was released on 2007-09-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early European explorers regularly portrayed California as an island on their maps, mistaking the Gulf of California as extending northward without limit. This volume is written to show that California history can also be presented in a different way: its thesis, plainly stated, is that California (despite all of its unique qualities) has never been an island.
Download or read book Empire of Sand written by Thomas E. Sheridan and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the earliest days of their empire in the New World, the Spanish sought to gain control of the native peoples and lands of what is now Sonora. While missionaries were successful in pacifying many Indians, the Seris--independent groups of hunter-gatherers who lived on the desert shores and islands of the Gulf of California--steadfastly defied Spanish efforts to subjugate them. Empire of Sand is a documentary history of Spanish attempts to convert, control, and ultimately annihilate the Seris. These papers of religious, military, and government officials attest to the Seris' resilience in the face of numerous Spanish attempts to conquer them and remove them from their lands. The documents include early observations of the Seris by Jesuit missionaries, descriptions of the collapse of the Seri mission system in 1748, accounts of the invasion of Tibur n Island in 1750 and the Sonora Expedition of 1767-71, and reports of late eighteenth-century Seri hostilities. Thomas E. Sheridan's introduction puts the documents in perspective, while his notes objectively clarify their significance. By skillfully weaving the documents into a coherent narrative of Spanish-Seri interaction, he has produced a compelling account of empire and resistance that speaks to anthropologists, historians, and all readers who take heart in stories of resistance to oppression.
Download or read book Federal Register written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
