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The Channel Islands Barbed point type occurs on the three larger northern Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. The points are small, unusually thin, and carefully knapped, and occur in archaeological assemblages dating between 12,100 and 7,800 cal B.P. Based on points of this type in museum collections compiled during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and a lesser number from recent investigations, we present a typology of Channel Islands Barbed points consisting of seven subtypes, with the objective of facilitating investigation into their spatio­temporal patterning. The delicate character of the points implies that the spears or darts on which they were hafted were used to acquire fauna in aquatic environments or were thrust rather than thrown, given that they would be highly vulnerable to breakage if thrown on land. Although having a very limited geographic distribution, the Channel Islands Barbed point type is comparable in quality of knapping to other Paleoindian and early Archaic types found elsewhere in North America.

This issue of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology (JCGBA) will mark my rst as editor. It is with great excitement and a deep sense of responsibility that I take over the editorship from Dr. Lynn Gamble. Her leadership over the last six years has allowed JCGBA to thrive and consistently produce top-quality research that highlights the diverse and complex history of California and the Great Basin. My primary goal as editor will be to continue to nurture this tradition. the JCGBA is the only academic publication in the far west that features articles from all four subfields of anthropology—linguistics, biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology. With anthropology departments ssioning around the country due to nancial constraints and philosophical and theoretical differences, I see the Journal as a way to share our research within and across disciplines. When reading the JCGBA manuscripts that cross my desk, I often am reminded that despite the application of very different methods and analytical tools, our discipline is held together because we have much to offer one another, and an understanding of the human condition requires a holistic perspective.

Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Contributions in Anthropology 3, 2008, 101 pp., 20 b/w gures, 2 maps, 27 tables, $21.95 (soft cover).

In this short paper we describe a crescent fragment recently found at a site on San Miguel Island. Crescents are important terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene time markers in California and the Great Basin, but knowledge about their distribution, chronology, and function is limited by incomplete reporting of their occurrences in the published literature. Although several crescents were found on the Channel Islands by antiquarians or early archaeologists, very few have come from known sites or specific contexts The crescent from CA-SMI-681 comes from an upland lithic scatter, a context that supports a utilitarian function associated with the manufacturing, use, and maintenance of points and related hunting equipment The crescent adds to the evidence for a substantial presence of Paleocoastal peoples on San Miguel and the other northern Channel Islands.

For at least the last half-century, Middle Holocene "red abalone middens" have been of interest to a variety of scientists working on the Channel Islands of California. Paleoclimatologists, oceanographers, ecologists, and archaeologists have all offered hypotheses to explain their widespread occurrence; however, quantification of their midden constituents has generally been insufficient to explain both their temporal and spatial variability. Detailed zooarchaeological analysis is a key component in understanding why these middens appeared at about 7,500 cal B.P. and disappeared at about 3,300 cal B.P. Faunal data from three radiocarbon (carbon 14) dated red abalone middens on San Miguel Island are presented. The analysis demonstrates both the geographic and temporal variability inherent within these sites, and suggests that our models for explaining their presence must account for this complexity.

A stratified and deeply buried Middle Holocene shell midden (CA-SMI-396) on San Miguel Island recently produced evidence of the earliest securely dated water bottle and tarring pebbles in southern California. Several asphaltum basketry impressions, including what appears to be a fragment of a coiled basket, and two tarring pebble features were found eroding from shell midden deposits dating as early as 5130 cal BP. We suggest that water bottle production may have developed during the Middle Holocene on the Channel Islands, where fresh water resources were scarce, as a response to the relatively warm and dry periods of the Middle Holocene. The coiled basketry impression is unique for this time period in the Chumash area and its implications are difficult to assess.

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 concluding reply from the author., Introduction In just 15 years, the term 'Anthropocene', proposed by Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) to describe a new geological era of our own making, has entered the collective consciousness of [...]