Oral Presentation Session

Reviewed by: Anthropology and Environment Society

Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students

Primary Theme: Anthropocene

Secondary Theme: Resilience

(5-0110) From Kelp to Concrete: Long-term perspectives on adaptation, risk, and resilience on the West Coast of North America

The West Coast of North America is a dynamic geographic, geological, and socio-cultural edge that has shaped human experience for thousands of years. From the Kelp Highway to today’s concrete sea walls and rock revetments, humans have responded and adapted to this shifting edge through culture, technology, ideology, and a certain dogged persistence (for better and worse). According to current archaeological and genomic data, the Americas were first colonized sometime between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago (Llamas et al 2016; Braje et al 2017). During this time, global sea level has been on the rise, albeit at varying rates. For the past 7,000 years, the rate of sea level rise remained relatively stable. This period of stability lasted until about a century ago and played a fundamental role in shaping expanded coastal settlement and population growth (Griggs 2017:5; see also Griggs, Patsch and Savoy 2005). Today millions of people call this stretch of North America home—from Anchorage to Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles all the way to the West Coast of Mexico. With the onset of anthropogenic climate change in the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000; Steffen et al. 2011; Sayre 2012) and increasing rates of sea level rise, these coastal communities face tremendous challenges in the coming years of the 21st century. Starting with the premise that long-term understandings of human-environment relations are fundamental for approaching and assessing the complex future that lies before us, this session seeks to bring together perspectives from archaeology, environmental anthropology, historical ecology, cultural ecology, and political ecology to examine humanity’s relationship with the West Coast of North America.

Organizer(s)

• Ryan Anderson

  Santa Clara University

Chair(s)

• Ryan Anderson

  Santa Clara University

Presenter(s)

• Ryan Anderson

  Santa Clara University

• Todd Braje

  Irvine Chair of Anthropology and Associate Curator
  California Academy of Sciences

• Lee Panich

  Santa Clara University

• Kathleen Sullivan

  California State University Los Angeles

• Amy Gusick

  Associate Curator
  Natural History Museum of Los Angeles

Presentations:

• 8:00 AM - 8:15 AM

  Rising Tides & Armored Coasts: A political ecology of sea level rise adaptation along the California coast
  Ryan B. Anderson – Santa Clara University
• 8:15 AM - 8:30 AM

  Bills of Fare, Consumer Preference, Social Status, and the Collapse of California Abalone
  Todd Braje – California Academy of Sciences
• 8:30 AM - 8:45 AM

  Waves of Persistence: Native Californians and Five Centuries of Colonial Encounters on the Pacific Coast
  Lee M. Panich – Santa Clara University
• 8:45 AM - 9:00 AM

  At the Boundary: Estuary Scientists Facing Climate Change
  Kathleen Sullivan – California State University Los Angeles
• 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM

  Trans-Holocene and Inter-Island Approaches to Human-Coastal Interactions: A Case Study from the Channel Islands of California
  Amy E. Gusick – Natural History Museum of Los Angeles