Brian F Byrd
I am an archaeologist interested in hunter-gatherer adaptations, the origins of social complexity, and early settled village life from a cross-cultural perspective. I have focused my research on two venues: the Near East (and the southern Levant in particular) where I have explored in the transition to sedentism and early Neolithic village life during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene; and Western North American where I have been particularly interested in the emergence of Late Holocene complex hunter-gatherers in California, notably along the southern coast and in the San Francisco Bay area. Within these contexts, I have delved into a variety of more specific topics including household organization, vernacular architecture and the built environment, microlithic assemblage variability, the application of isotope and DNA analysis to prehistoric contexts, and use of GIS modeling to explore territoriality and regional interaction. I am also an enrolled member in the federally recognized Shawnee Tribe.
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communities in the San Francisco Bay-Delta area after the arrival of the Spanish in 1776 C.E. Baptismal records
indicate that more than half of the Native American village communities in the region persisted as independent entities for at least another 25 years or longer. Archaeological evidence and radiocarbon and obsidian hydration results from post-contact native settlements are spatially patterned in a manner consistent with the archival record. Material indicators of the Mission Period (such as European material culture and non-native plant and animal resources) are also present at many radiocarbon-dated post-contact native settlements, indicating at least a limited movement of goods but also highlighting how these data sets are poor indicators of indigenous persistence during the early colonial era. The results provide a foundation for future research into initial reactions to the colonial intrusion from the perspective of traditional native communities.