Uncovering the Indigenous Past at Mission La Purisima

We are gearing up to present our research for the annual SCA meeting on Friday, March 5th, at 1pm. Check out the symposium abstracts and program overview here: https://scahome.org/meetings/annual-meeting-2/. The last day to register for the conference is today, Monday, March 1st!

One year ago today!

If you'll be in the Santa Barbara area, come and support UCSB students as they present original research on last summer's excavations at Mission La Purisima.

The pestle and grindstone found in situ on the floor in the Chumash Family Apartments.

Today we worked on floating the soil samples taken during summer excavations. The light fraction will be sent off for botanical analysis and the heavy fraction will be sorted in the lab.

Presenting the initial results of our summer excavations at the Society for California Archaeology Southern Data Sharing Meeting. Happy Archaeology Month!

This project has received funding from Critical Mission Studies! More information can be here fohttps://quote.ucsd.edu/criticalmissionstudies/

After further investigation, the grindstone found a few weeks ago was likely worn down from its original size. It was probably much bigger, about 15" to 17" in diameter, and was rotated by a crank at one end of the axel. The grindstone recently uncovered at Mission La Purisima was 7" in diameter and usewear analysis suggests it was discarded as a sharpening wheel but likely repurposed as a sharpening stone.

This project was featured on the local news station! https://www.keyt.com//anthropology-students-un/1106665543 It was also featured here:... https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2019/019577/digging-scene https://exploratornews.wordpress.com/ http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp https://www.edhat.com//la-purisima-mission-excavation-unea

Here are some of the photos from yesterday showing off our most exciting finds yet. We thanked Gina for all of her work with us and gifted her with an engraved trowel, and we even had some last-minute finds!

Photos to go along with the video of the pestle and grinding stone excavation, from initially uncovering it to identifying its boundaries and finally pulling it from the ground.

Explaining the awesome finds yesterday as we began to unearth them. A pestle and a grinding stone!

Removing the roof collapse and getting closer to the floor!

In the local news!

Today was a busy day! We expanded our unit to expose the roof tile collapse that is capping the floor in the Native Family Apartments. We also had a lot of visitors and press who came by for the Mission's interpretive event. It was exciting to share our new interpretive panel with everyone.