Undergraduate Research & Scholarships

Diego Andres Hamernik L&S Social Sciences

California Coastal Stewardship: An Eco-Archaeological Study

The ongoing climate crisis has highlighted the pressing need to revisit contemporary approaches to resource management and usage. Through the analysis of archaeological assemblages, my research aims to gain a deeper understanding of how coastal resources were used and managed by Indigenous communities in California over the past two thousand years. The objective of this study is to gain insight from indigenous resource stewardship practices, towards the end of developing more sustainable resource management approaches in the present. Through methods such as stable isotope analysis, I seek to assess resource use patterns across seasons and over time. This study is designed to address two key research questions: (1) how did long-term harvesting practices impact the stability of shellfish populations, and (2) how did shellfishing strategies evolve during periods of documented climatic changes in the past one to two thousand years along the California Coast?

Message To Sponsor

Thank you for supporting this research. Your sponsorship has allowed me to contribute to a body of knowledge that I believe to be very important. I look forward to using this opportunity as a stepping stone to conduct more research in the future. Thanks!
Major: Anthropology
Mentor: Kent Lightfoot, Alec Apodaca
Sponsor: Wishek Fund
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