Even today, they are material manifestations that evoke history, memory, and meanings. Not just relics or epiphenomena of the pre-historic/historic past, the marked boulders are representations of meaningful social and cultural practices (or, as I will discuss, of rituals). The marked boulders are more than cultural phenomena to be placed in a temporal/spatial context, they are a critical part of the archaeological record, and need to be fully integrated into archaeological studies. This study is intended to provide a workable model and methodology for additional contextual research that can enhance the level of knowledge that is presently available to rock art studies. Soil dating techniques have also been applied to determine if it is possible to establish the temporal period when the markings were placed on the boulders. PCNs are elements that have been pecked into specific boulders at numerous sites in the coastal Ranges of California. Related disciplines, such as linguistics, will also inform this study about the spread of culturally related pre-historic peoples, in examination with the geographical distribution of PCN (Pecked Curvilinear Nucleated) sites. Through this contextual study perhaps more can also be learned about the roles that ritual may have played in the lives of past people, and how these people interacted with these special places (the marked boulders) on the landscape. Cultural activities, identified by recovered artifacts, will be placed in temporal periods these will permit me to make inferences about possible settlement patterns, associated assemblages of artifacts, ethnography, the interactions within the landscape, and how these may be associated with the marked boulders. ![]() ![]() In this dissertation I will take the study of rock art (or cultural markings), bridge it into the study of an archaeological landscape, and add the pre-historic people, their movement and interactions with the landscape. These are cultural products and practices of native peoples of California and were done primarily during pre-historic times, although dating them is not easy or straightforward. The marks on these boulders are known as PCN (Pecked Curvilinear Nucleated) elements, given this name as descriptive of the manufacturing technique that created the marks that were pecked into the rocks. This dissertation is a study of these boulders and how they are to be understood in a contextual analysis. ![]() Goals and Significance of Dissertation During pre-historic times, a certain type of boulder was culturally modified or marked and is found scattered across the landscape of the Coastal Ranges of California. IntroductionĪrchaeology is our voyage to the past, where we discover who we were and therefore who we are.
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