Table of contents

"This booklet is divided into several sections. The first provides an overview of Marianas prehistory and a physical description of Rota. This is followed by a section presenting a summary of archaeological research undertaken on Rota beginning with the observations of European visitors in the nineteenth century and concluding with the professionally-supervised archaeological projects completed between the 1970's and the mid-1990's. The final section presents a broad historical overview divided into periods corresponding with the various colonial regimes that administered the Marianas from the late seventeenth century until the establishment of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in the 1970's. Augmenting the main text is a relatively extensive bibliography of pertinent works"--P. ix.

Based on detailed excavation data, the author reconstructs the paleography of the Santa Barbara coast ca. 8500 years ago, makes comparisons to other early California sites, and applies his findings to current theories of hunter-gatherers and coastal environments. With an emphasis on paleographic reconstructions, site formation processes, chronological studies, and integrated faunal analyses, the work will be of interest to a wide range of scholars working in shell middens, hunter-gatherer ecology, geoarchaeology, and coatal or aquatic adaptations.