August 11, 2005
Contacts: Jo Ann Lloyd
Cal Poly Public Affairs
(805) 756-6530; jlloyd@calpoly.edu
Kathleen Maclay
UC Berkeley
(510) 643-5651; kmaclay@berkeley.edu
Cal Poly, UC Berkeley Experts Link Polynesians and California Indian tribes
Cal Poly social sciences associate professor Terry Jones and UC Berkeley lecturer Kathryn Klar say linguistic and archaeological evidence points to Polynesians landing in Southern California between 400 and 800 A.D. and sharing their boat-building skills with Chumash and Gabrielino Indians in the region.
Their research appears this week in American Antiquity, a leading peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of American archaeology. A brief story also appeared in the April edition of Archaeology magazine.
A story about the research appeared in the Berkeleyan, UC Berkeley’s weekly newspaper for faculty and staff members, and also can be found at the UC Berkeley NewsCenter at http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2005/08/03_chumash.shtml.Jones and Klar say more work is needed to prove for certain their theory of contact between the Polynesians and California Indians. It runs counter to the prevailing theory dismissing cultural diffusion and favoring the concept that local conditions serve as the basis of cultural change.
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