The final Topanga report remains primarily descriptive in order to make the data more useable for comparative purposes. Although this concluding report describes some new material, adds considerably to artifact frequencies, and defines Phase I and Phase II of the Topanga Culture, the basic conclusions reached earlier remain essentially unchanged, and the previous general conclusions need not be repeated here (Treganza and Malamud, 1950). This summary is the senior author’s opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of either of the coauthors of the Topanga reports.

An extended archaeological survey in upper Topanga Canyon and its main tributaries revealed ten additional habitation deposits comparable to the Tank Site, LAn-1. More recent excavations along the adjacent coast and in the interior valleys (Walker, 1951; Wallace, 1954; Peck, 1955) have produced artifacts comparable to both phases of the Topanga culture. Therefore, the Topanga Culture, as we have defined it here, is not limited to the Tank Site but contains local expression as well as relationships outside the immediate area.

The two phases of the Topanga Culture are derived primarily through differences in projectile points and burial customs. Phase I is characterized by large percussion-flaked blades and points (pl. 21) which occur in the Tank Site (LAn-1) from the surface to 60 inches in depth with the greatest frequency below 18 inches (see table 4), and no similar type points or blades have been found in LAn-2. Phase II projectile points are smaller, varied in type, and are pressure flaked (pls. 22, 23, f-m). These points are confined to the upper 18 inches of the Tank Site and are exclusive to LAn-2. There are three forms of interment in the Tank Site, all of which characterize Phase I: (1) primary inhumation, extended, prone or supine, head southerly; (2) reburial, segments of long bones only, generally under an inverted metate; and (3) fractional burial with interment of long bones only. By virtue of its deep occurrence the reburial is the most ancient in the Tank Site (Treganza and Malamud, 1950, p. 135, burial 8). Phase II burials are flexed, with no specific orientation, and occur both with and without rock cairns. These burials were all limited to LAn-2.

Since clear-cut stratigraphic evidence is lacking it is difficult to assign other classes of artifacts as being definitely associated with any one specific phase of the Topanga Culture. Some general statements can be made. The large quantity of basalt core tools, especially scraper planes, occur deep in the Tank Site and are far less common in LAn-2. Manos and metates bear out the same relationship; however, both these types of artifacts span the time gap from early occurrences to the historic period. It is only when one or both of these elements characterize or dominate a site, such as in LAn-1, that they have diagnostic or comparative value in so far as the Topanga Culture is concerned.

Cog stones, discoidals, and crescentic stones, or “amulets,” are unique types of artifacts, and when found in the right association with other artifacts may prove to be valuable horizon indicators. Cog stones and discoidals occur most commonly along the interior margin of the southern California littoral, and, where documented, the mano and metate are also present. Crescentic stones, as an artifact type, have been most objectively associated with the San Dieguito of the San Diego coast and the San Dieguito-Playa (Lake Mohave) Culture of the eastern desert. However, the crescentic stone in its various forms expresses considerable latitude in time and space.

Certain elements in the Topanga Culture might be viewed as “index artifacts” when they occur as associates. To have comparative value it is the combination of traits which create the cultural pattern and not the isolates. Phase I is characterized by a combination of extended burial with the head south, reburial of long bones under metate, fractional burial, percussion-flaked projectile points and blades, dominance of flake and core tools, dominance of milling stones with wide variation in the hand stone (mano), crescentic stones, stone cogs, and stone discoidals. The latter two may occur late in this first phase. Phase II has flexed burials with no specific orientation, an occasional rock cairn in association, pressure-flaked projectile points constituting several types, and dominance of the cobble mortar and pestle as milling implements, though the latter may occur toward the end of Phase I.

Through lack of clear-cut stratigraphic evidence, all other artifacts described for the Tank Site will have to be considered either as late Phase I or early Phase II. Unless subsequent excavations at LAn-2 produce data of a nature different than that already described, this latter site should represent the type site for Phase II of the Topanga Culture.

Following the first published Topanga report, two village sites along the adjacent coast have been excavated, both of which share comparative traits with the two phases of Topanga Culture (Wallace, 1954, 1955; Peck, 1955). Both authors were handicapped in making comparisons, since this final report was not available. With future comparisons to be made, a clarification of some statements might be in order. Wallace (1955, Table I, p. 220) in presenting “milling stone horizon cultural assemblages” uses nine broad comparative categories for five different geographical areas in which each area is known by one or more excavation sites. The traits listed by Wallace under the heading of Topanga are those characteristic of Phase I with the possible exception of the mortar and pestle. “Few clam disk beads” are also listed. The only shell artifact found in the Tank Site was a single massive clam-disk bead which, because of its shallow occurrence (4 inches), is probably a Phase II artifact.

Peck (1955, p. 70), comparing Zuma Creek with Topanga, mentions the following as occurring at the Tank Site (LAn-1): “... hard calcareous mass at lower levels.” Reference must be to the nonculturally altered sandstone base of the site, since the lowest portion of the cultural deposit, the C profile, is rather soft (Treganza and Malamud, 1950, p. 130). Peck notes burial markers as: “stone platforms, red ocher abundant, and flint tools.” Large aggregates of stone were common in the Tank Site and are termed features, being composed of large quantities of boulders, whole and broken artifacts, and frequently a segment of human long bone (fig. 1). Frequently one or more metates occurred with burials. Red ocher was abundant in small granules throughout the site and appeared more frequently in the burial areas, but not to the extent as to class an interment as being a red-ocher burial in the traditional meaning or even as a burial marker. Flint tools consist of a single chert blade. Varied silicates occur as artifacts in the Tank Site but not as grave markers. Peck (1955, p. 70) also lists manos as occurring in pairs. Two was not characteristic for the Tank Site as mano caches occurred, numbering from two up to six (pl. 19, a, b).

It has been difficult to place the Topanga Culture in a compatible time perspective with the other known early cultural assemblages of southern California. Topanga, between its two phases, has elements in part comparable to all of these earlier cultures but lacks a majority of artifacts common to any one. Paramount for an explanation is the “abnormal” quantity of lithic artifacts classed under the broad heading of core and flake tools which occur in the Tank Site. Most characteristic are scraper planes, choppers, and a variety of heavy-duty scrapers. Western archaeologists fail to share any common understanding as to what these artifacts mean in time and function. The many subvarieties into which these major classes have been divided suggest they are more the product of a too elaborate or overextended typology rather than varieties that have cultural significance. In part, the Topanga papers make the same error in attempting to describe objectively a large mass of data and at the same time devise some system whereby not only the Topanga artifacts but other materials could be made more meaningful in terms of cultural comparisons. Needed is a reËxamination of the entire concept of “core tools” in western North America. Earlier, few people recognized or reported such tools. Now the other extreme has the artifact versus the “naturifact” and the talk of culture in such loose terms as preblade industries.

Habitual thinking has perhaps contributed to the general idea that a lithic assemblage of core tools characterized by percussion flaking has come to represent both antiquity and a hunting- or skin-dressing economy. This may be true in instances where the physical and the biological evidence are sufficient to support such a claim.

The general antiquity of the Tank Site can be established on the grounds of physical evidence but the great quantity of core tools invites speculation to account for their occurrence in a nonhunting culture. Some 4,994 core tools were collected from the Tank Site of an estimated presence of 50,000. This figure is exceptionally high, compared to other southern California sites of assumed similar age. Greatest in amounts were scraper planes and core hammerstones. Curiously enough, none of the scraper planes, regardless of finish, shows any degree of wear of battering on the presumed working edge or polishing on the under surface as would be expected to occur with use. This is true of similar artifacts from the San Dieguito, La Jolla, and Lake Mohave cultures. Possibly as a fleshing tool no such wear would result, but evidence of skin dressing is lacking with so little mammal bone occuring in the site. A wood-working or plant-fiber economy likewise would hardly necessitate any great quantity or variety of tools. The large pulping plane used to remove mescal fiber from a leaf was rare even among the historic Diegueno.

To account for the large number of “core tools” in the Tank Site, especially scraper planes, choppers, and core hammerstones, it is suggested these tools are actually crude implements used in the manufacture and maintainence of more refined implements directly associated with the mass production of the food economy, that is, the milling stones known as the mano and metate. The function of these primitive mills is to grind, necessitating a rough contact between the surface of the mano and the metate. When the surfaces are worn smooth, caking of meal (acorn) occurs on the polished faces, resulting in the reduced efficiency of the mill. Primitive peoples who have used the mano and metate solve this problem in one of two ways. In the Southwest and in Mexico volcanic scoriaceous or vessicular basalt is selected for either or both the hand stone and the grinding slab. As wear progresses new holes are constantly opened up on the surface of both the grinding tools and hence the mill constantly maintains full grinding efficiency and is self-sharpening. If granites, sandstones, or schist are used, as is often the case, then on frequent occasions the grinding surfaces have to be artificially pitted. To do this a core is made containing angular points and edges and sharp blows are struck on the faces of the mano and metate, removing small pitts (fig. 5, b, f; Treganza and Malamud, 1950, pl. 22, b, c, g). This latter technique of pecking or crumbling is the same as that used to shape or reduce a stone to a desired rough form preparatory to grinding as a finishing technique. It was discovered in our own experience in the manufacturing of stone artifacts (Treganza and Valdivia, 1955) that when a core hammerstone lost its sharp edges through battering it was of little use, and continued use of such a blunt hammerstone often broke the object being manufactured.

Where this pecking technique is used to sharpen manos and metates three end products result in terms of exhausted tools and become part of the camp refuse. Hammerstones occur as subangular nodules with battered blunt edges; manos, when they are worn too thin, usually break in the process of pitting, and the metate in time wears through or the bottom gets knocked out resulting in a “killed” artifact. What has earlier been referred to by many authors as the “ceremonial killing” of an artifact might also be viewed as the end product of function.

It is noted that Phase II site LAn-2 shows a sudden decline in core tools accompanied by a decline in manos and metates. Presumably the mortar becomes a replacement.

Recovered from approximately one-tenth of the Tank Site were 2,556 manos, 329 metates, both whole and broken, and 1,478 worn-out hammerstones. No clear breaking point could be established between an unused scraper plane, which is really a core with one or more flat bottoms, and a partly used hammerstone, or between just a plain core and a partly used hammerstone. Probably most of our scraper planes might be considered potential hammerstones. This being the case, the scraper plane may be just a “myth artifact” growing out of the literature and typologies rather than being an existing reality. This does not imply that all so-called core and flake tools or even some scraper planes should be considered in the same light. It merely points up the fact that Western terminology and typology might be reËxamined. One exception might be considered in the Type IA scraper planes (Treganza and Malamud, 1950, pl. 17, a), which, because of symmetry, flat base, marginal and all-over surface flaking, are similar to the classical forms of the San Dieguito Culture.

The possibility that this “abnormal” quantity of the core tools characterizing the early phase of Topanga can be related to a functional part of a seed-gathering economy relieves some difficulties in making cultural comparisons, and provides a more realistic approach. Why Topanga should have more core tools than other reported sites may also have an answer. Some early archaeologists failed to recognize core tools and naturally did not collect them. Sites immediate to the coast generally have a split marine-land economy, and though the metate and mano are present, the core tools used for purposes of pitting such artifacts are distributed more widely in a mound mass charged with shell refuse. Often, along the coast, beach cobbles and cobbles from marine conglomerate provide the only lithic source close at hand, and a resulting tool made from a cobble resembles more a chopper or a “teshoa” flake. This is particularly true of metate-producing sites around Santa Barbara. The Tank Site is adjacent to a massive basalt outcrop from which angular core tools were manufactured. Thus, quarry refuse, and immediate lithic supply, and an economy demanding a great many pecking tools, plus erosional factors that might have concentrated artifacts in the course of time, can in part help explain the great quantity of core tools found at Topanga.

Suggested Chronology of Early Milling and Hunting Cultures of Southern California

Table 8

Since Carbon-14 dates are lacking, Topanga can receive only a relative position in a not too well understood southern California cultural sequence. Cultural placement therefore rests upon the recovered types of artifacts, the physical and chemical alterations of both mound mass and artifacts, and the physiographic location of the Topanga sites in terms of a paleogeographic environment. That two phases of the Topanga Culture exist is shown by stratigraphic evidence in the Tank Site with supporting evidence in the adjacent LAn-2 characterizing a Phase II period.

Recently a cultural chronology has been suggested for southern California coastal archaeology (Wallace, 1955, p. 227, table 3). Earlier a similar chronology was constructed (Treganza, 1950, table 8) which lacked recent data but was more comprehensive and included possible cross-cultural ties with the desert cultures of the southwestern part of the Great Basin.

Presented here is a modification and more limited view of the earlier chronological chart (table 8), differing from the chronology presented by Wallace mainly in the duration of time, and the inclusion of more recent data. Without knowledge of two phases of the Topanga Culture and without the aid of complete data, Wallace dates Topanga at about 2000 B.C. but not over 3000 B.C. Sites (or cultures) such as Oak Grove, Little Sycamore, Malaga Cove II, and La Jolla I are given a date between 0 B.C. and 3000 B.C. (average, 1500 B.C.). With more specific dating for the peripheral areas, especially the central California Middle and Early Horizons, a date of 2000 B.C. for Topanga seems far too conservative to fit comfortably into any over-all generalized chronology for California. Likewise, if Phase I of Topanga is related, as is suggested, to the San Dieguito of San Diego County, and the latter is related to the ancient Lake Mohave (Playa) Culture of the eastern desert, then the acceptance of a date of a little over 3000 B.C. for these cultures would suggest the geologic dating for ancient Lake Mohave as too early or that coastal southern California has suffered a considerable cultural lag. It is doubted that either is the case.

Though claims have been made for Third Interglacial occupation of the southern California coast, convincing evidence is still lacking. The organized cultural activities of man first appear as a combination of shore-line and milling activities directed toward the collection and preparation of food. This simple ecological adaptation could have occupied considerable periods of time involving little or no cultural modification in the direction of technological change. It does not seem to conservative to date Phase I of Topanga between 4000 B.C. and 8000 B.C. and Phase II with some overlap from 2500 B.C. to 5000 B.C.