Paleoenvironment and Culture History
People in a Changing Land: The Archaeology and History of the Ballona in Los Angeles, California, Volume 1

Edited by Jeffrey A. Homburg, John G. Douglass, and Seetha N. Reddy

Donn R. Grenda, Richard Ciolek-Torello, and Jeffrey H. Altschul, series editors

Technical Series 94, Volume 1

178 pp. / 2014

This volume provides an introduction and background to the Playa Vista Archaeological and Historical Project (PVAHP), a 25-year research project located in a former wetland complex in west Los Angeles known as the Ballona. This volume offers an overview of one of the largest archaeological projects in recent memory in southern California. The volume begins by detailing the long-term research that has been conducted in the Ballona and offers an updated research design and culture history for the region which combined offer a much deeper understanding of the past 10,000 years of human occupation in the area. The updated research design synthesizes the original research questions and goals from when the project started and offers updated theoretical ideas and methodological techniques to adapt to current thinking and archaeological trends. In addition, this volume offers several chapters synthesizing regional studies of paleoenvironmental reconstruction; it documents and details the PVAHP paleoenvironmental study, which offers important insights into the connection between environmental change in the area and human occupation over the last 8,000 years. The Ballona paleoenvironmental reconstruction was designed to complement the archaeological excavations at National Register of Historic Places–eligible archaeological sites and provides a geoarchaeological context for interpreting the distribution of habitats and the evolution of landscapes in the area.