| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Chumash World at European Contact: Power, Trade, and Feasting among Complex Hunter-Gatherers. By Lynn H. Gamble. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. xiv, 361 pp. $49.95, ISBN 978-0-520-25441-1.)

Lynn H. Gamble has written an important book of interest to scholars of Native America and in particular to those who examine socioeconomic development among hunter-gatherers. For thousands of years, the Chumash inhabited among the most concentrated settlements in what would become Southern California. They lived on the coast of the mainland, on the Channel Islands, and in the interior. Scholars have settled on the figure of 18,000 as the most likely population estimate for all Chumash villages when Spain began to settle the region in 1769. Spanish soldiers and missionaries were impressed by the abundant food resources and the complex political structures of Chumash villages, and anthropologists have made the Chumash among the most studied people of the Pacific Coast of North America. In The Chumash World at European Contact Gamble concentrates on one division of the Chumash, those whose settlements clustered on the mainland near present-day Santa Barbara. More precisely, Gamble takes as her focus the villagers of Helo'. This prominent site was home to between 500 and 1,000 villagers, and excavations there have yielded considerable data on Chumash household activities and mortuary customs.

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