 The farther back one goes in the past, the more closely
were people bound to their ecosystems.
 Processes of social and cultural change are imbedded
within this relationship.
 Present and past landscapes are/were anthropogenic.
One can arrive at an understanding about how
landscapes came to look the way they do as a result of
past human activities.
Star Carr was investigated
from 1949-51 by Grahame
Clark of Cambridge
University. He pioneered
an environmental approach
at the site.
Harry
Godwin
Botanist
 Clark had been searching for a
Mesolithic site where conditions
favored the preservation of
organic material. Organic
remains do preserve well in peat.
 Rancho Los Nietos was granted to Jose Manuel Nieto
in 1784. It consisted of 167,000 acres. It was broken up
in 1841, and part became Rancho Las Bolsas. This
became the Stearns ranch in 1860.
 The lagoon was an estuary of a branch of the Santa
Ana River called Freeman Creek.
 Oil was discovered in the 1920’s, leading to the
building of dikes, water drainage, and the building of
roads.
 The lagoon is flanked by Bolsa Chica mesa to the
northwest, and Huntington mesa to the southeast
 The Spanish called the area shell beach due to the
shell eroding out of numerous middens.
 There are multiple sites on the mesas: ORA-83, ORA-
85, ORA-365, ORA-82, ORA-88. The sites show human
activity from 9,000 to 1,000 years ago. ORA-83, the
Cogged Stone site is the most famous.
 Sites on the Mesa were excavated by Hal Eberhart of
CSULA in 1964, and Paul Langenwalter II and Nancy
Anastasia Wiley in recent decades.
 When asked about the presence of shell at a site far
distant from the ocean, Langenwalter commented that
a lagoon had once existed that had been filled up by
erosion generated by cattle grazing.
 Geologically the Burren is composed of limestone
from a 350 million year old seabed that was uplifted
and then sculpted by glaciers.
 Upland areas are devoid of soil cover. The topography
is described as karstic, meaning that it is heavily
weathered and eroded.
 Palynology – indicating a pine forest prior to human
arrival.
 Soil in grikes (grikes are karstic crevices).
 Soil preserved under Neolithic monuments, eg.
Poulnabrone dolmen (Early Neolithic Portal Tomb).
 Prehistoric horicultural settlements and field
boundary wall systems in upland settings.
 Poulnabrone portal tomb 3800-3600 BC
Stone hoe blade dating to the
Late Bronze Age (c. 1000 BC).