Nathan Acebo is an Assistant Professor of in Anthropology and Social and Critical Inquiry-Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), and Associate Director of NAIS at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Acebo was the University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Critical Mission Studies Fellowship at the UC Merced and UC San Diego from 2020-2021. Nathan practices CBPR-based Indigenous Archaeology, and his research focuses on Colonial era Archaeology and Historical Anthropology in California and Hawaii. Dr. Acebo was the 2022-2023 Mellon Faculty of Color Working Group Fellow at Tufts University.
Perhaps it is not obvious to many of us, but the future will be/is Indigenous. Please join us vir... more Perhaps it is not obvious to many of us, but the future will be/is Indigenous. Please join us virtually for a one-hour discussion with a Q&A on how Indigenous peoples are visualizing inclusive futures and mobilizing creative media (e.g., journalism, video-game design, and artwork) to foster Indigenous activism, restorative justice, and education. As part of the UConn Indigenous Speaker Series and Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series, we are honored to be joined by three leaders in this space included: Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva-Scottish; Marvel Comic Book Illustrator, Fashion Designer, Activist), Meagan Byrne (Âpihtawikosisân; Video Game and Multimedia Designer), and Alyssa London (Tlingit; Journalist, Actor, Children’s Book Author, TV Producer [PBS], Miss Alaska 2017)
Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) in the San Bernardino Mountains has been regarded as a seasonal Late Prehi... more Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) in the San Bernardino Mountains has been regarded as a seasonal Late Prehistoric Complex acorn processing base camp since it was excavated in the 1960s. Reanalysis of its collections and new investigations at the nearby Willow Creek Crossing sites permit reevaluation of archaeological models for the Transverse Ranges of southern California and the adjacent Mojave Desert. Diagnostic artifacts, site structure, and obsidian hydration dating indicate montane Greven Knoll I (9,400-4,000 BP) occupations in inland southern California several millennia earlier than has been previously posited. Moreover, the presence of stemmed points suggests that the Greven Knoll Pattern of the Encinitas Tradition was introduced into the region directly from the Mojave Desert during the onset of the Altithermal. This analysis also serves as a reminder for archaeologists to use ethnohistoric models with caution and to look beyond the obvious. RESUMEN Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) en las San Bernardino Mountains ha sido considerado como un campamento base de procesamiento de bellotas estacionales del Complejo Prehistórico Tardío desde que fue excavado en la década de 1960. El reanálisis de sus colecciones y las nuevas investigaciones en los sitios cercanos de Willow Creek Crossing permiten reevaluar los modelos arqueológicos para las Transverse Range y el adyacente Mojave Desert. Los artefactos, la estructura del sitio, y obsidiana indican ocupaciones montanas de Greven Knoll I (9,400-4,000 BP) en el interior varios milenios antes de lo que se había postulado anteriormente. Además, la presencia de puntos de tallo sugiere que el Greven Knoll de la
Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, 2021
Alongside other Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cultural values, Gerald Vizenor’s (Whi... more Alongside other Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cultural values, Gerald Vizenor’s (White Earth Nation) concept of survivance has become an increasingly popular interpretive perspective in Indigenous archaeology and related fields of heritage management. Survivance is a powerful Indigenous condition that enables the rejection of Indigenous victimhood. Archaeologists are positively adapting survivance to work with archaeological perspectives on materiality and social practice to challenge false representations of Indigenous peoples as racially inauthentic and/or figuratively extinct in academic and public heritage discourses. However, questions linger over the depth and breadth of archaeologists’ engagement with Vizenor’s broader project of Indigenous healing (i.e., “socio-acupuncture”) given different but persistently generalized middle-range theorizations of survivance in archaeological research. In this chapter, I provide a brief summary of Vizenor’s survivance and other interrelated concepts, applications of survivance in archaeology, and an example of archaeological survivance storytelling that emerged specifically through my research partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, and Payómkawichum peoples of the Los Angeles Basin (LA Basin) in Southern California.
The Archaeology of Place and Space in the West, 2021
The Black Star Canyon (Puhu) Village (CA-ORA-132; CHL #217) is famously known as the location of ... more The Black Star Canyon (Puhu) Village (CA-ORA-132; CHL #217) is famously known as the location of the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de Los Indios”, during which, a Native American encampment was massacred as a reprisal for stealing horses. The village underwent multiple archaeological excavations during the 1930s and 1950s and was officially memorialized as a California Historical Landmark. Problematically, the archaeological collections produced from said projects were never analyzed or published, and in the vacuum of empirical study, the massacre account has dominated the contemporary Orange County folklore. Folkloric beliefs held by the public are dominated by a “dark heritage” concerned with Indigenous extinction. In order to fully understand the village landmark’s past and effects on the Orange County public in the present, this paper highlights how the site’s features of historicity reproduced anti-Indigenous public heritage discourse on physical/cultural erasures through a failure to properly engage with Indigenous peoples (past and present) and the archaeological dimensions of place.
Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands: Survivance at Puhú, 2020
Conducted in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework in
partnership with Tongva... more Conducted in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework in partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, (Blas Adobe Aguliar Museum, Juaneño– Acjachemen Culture Center) and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians) peoples, this dissertation is an Indigenous Archaeology study of the California Historic Landmark (CHL#217; CA-ORA-132 and CA-ORA-317) Black Star Canyon Puhú Village site in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, California. The landmark memorializes the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de los Indios”. Indigenous occupants of the Puhú village were accused of stealing horses from local colonial settlers over several months, after which, the village was razed by hired American frontiersmen. I integrate perspectives from descendant collaborators, Indigenous survivance, philosophies of historicity, guerilla resistance, Practice Theory, and Assemblage Theory in the analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical data collected from five years of interviews, archival research, surveys, excavations, and laboratory research under the Black Star Canyon Archaeology Project (BSCAP). The result of my archaeological and ethnoarchival research reveals how the Puhú occupants exercised economic and political traditions within and beyond the village to exceed a condition of bare survival or micropolitical resistance after colonization. This study facilitates new attention to enduring communal scale Indigenous traditions associated with macropolitical forms of autonomy and prosperity in the Los Angeles Basin proximal colonial hinterlands. In doing so, the archaeological study is envisioned as facilitating a mode of Indigenous survivance-storytelling by challenging the foundations of colonial historiography associated with the landmark.
Post-colonial studies have facilitated understandings about indigenous Californians' responses to... more Post-colonial studies have facilitated understandings about indigenous Californians' responses to colonial oppression by drawing attention to the maintenance of 'traditional practices.' The endurance of traditional practices outside of colonial institutions in landscapes of indigenous life and memory further moved California colonial archaeology towards a renewed focus on autonomy. Similar perspectives were developed by Native American scholars, notably Gerald Vizenor's (1994, 2008) notion of survivance, but have yet to be broadly realized. This paper outlines tensions with California archaeology's colonial roots and the relationship between persistence and autonomy to illustrate how tensions can be eased by embracing the concept of survivances, and the actual survivances of indigenous peoples. This paper is a modified version of the opening presentation given at the session "Leaving the master's tools: shifting towards an analytic of survivance in California archaeology," modified to include comments by the discussant, Desireé Martinez.
This preliminary report provides information regarding archaeological investigations conducted du... more This preliminary report provides information regarding archaeological investigations conducted during May of 2017 at the Black Star Canyon Village site (California Historical Landmark #217, CA-ORA-132/317) in the Mariposa Reserve in Silverado, Orange County, California in compliance with “The Wildlands Conservancy Mariposa Reserve Permit For Archaeological Investigations”. Field investigations were focused on re-excavating areas of the Black Star Canyon Village that were sampled by previous archaeological projects (i.e. the Archaeological Survey Association-ASA 1952-1954 project), mapping said excavation, and collecting artifacts for subsequent analyses.
Report on the Reassessment of the Black Star Canyon Village Site Collections at the Bowers Museum, 2017
This collections report focuses on the principle investigator’s work on reassessing the collectio... more This collections report focuses on the principle investigator’s work on reassessing the collections and their excavation contexts during the 1930s Work Progress Administration (WPA) and California State Relief Administration (SERA) housed at the Bowers Museum. In the fall of 2016, the principle investigator was granted permission by the Bowers Museum to assess the WPA/SERA excavated collection, and began the catalog assessment process in the winter of 2017. The catalog assessment was undertaken and completed at the Bowers Museum’s curation facility in the spring of 2017. Prior to the evaluation of the WPA/SERA work, collections from the later 1950s Archaeological Survey Association (ASA) project at the Black Star Canyon Village were completely cataloged for the first time in the winter of 2016 with a completed provenience analysis in the fall of 2017. The ASA catalog informs the Bower Museum collections reassessment. This report is focused on detailing the cataloging assessment processes of the WPA collection, with a short synthesis of the later ASA excavation project at the Black Star village.
Chemical residue analysis was used in this study to identify the contents of 10 glass medicinal b... more Chemical residue analysis was used in this study to identify the contents of 10 glass medicinal bottles and vials in the nineteenth-century Market Street Chinatown collection from San Jose, California. Analyses were carried out using both classical techniques and modern instrumental methods. Chemical changes in the analytes, brought about by prolonged environmental exposure, introduced an unavoidable degree of uncertainty into all chemical identifications. Seven bottles yielded residues most likely representing mineral-based “stone drugs” used to treat a variety of ailments in traditional Chinese medicine. Three bottles contained calamine lotion, a zinc-based topical preparation used in both China and North America. These discoveries highlight the role of mineral-based medicines in treating diseases, ameliorating symptoms, and promoting health in nineteenth-century San Jose, California. The study findings also indicate that the location of bottle manufacture and bottle form alone do not provide sufficient information to determine whether a nineteenth-century medicinal bottle contained allopathic, homeopathic, or traditional Chinese medicine.
Perhaps it is not obvious to many of us, but the future will be/is Indigenous. Please join us vir... more Perhaps it is not obvious to many of us, but the future will be/is Indigenous. Please join us virtually for a one-hour discussion with a Q&A on how Indigenous peoples are visualizing inclusive futures and mobilizing creative media (e.g., journalism, video-game design, and artwork) to foster Indigenous activism, restorative justice, and education. As part of the UConn Indigenous Speaker Series and Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design Speaker Series, we are honored to be joined by three leaders in this space included: Weshoyot Alvitre (Tongva-Scottish; Marvel Comic Book Illustrator, Fashion Designer, Activist), Meagan Byrne (Âpihtawikosisân; Video Game and Multimedia Designer), and Alyssa London (Tlingit; Journalist, Actor, Children’s Book Author, TV Producer [PBS], Miss Alaska 2017)
Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) in the San Bernardino Mountains has been regarded as a seasonal Late Prehi... more Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) in the San Bernardino Mountains has been regarded as a seasonal Late Prehistoric Complex acorn processing base camp since it was excavated in the 1960s. Reanalysis of its collections and new investigations at the nearby Willow Creek Crossing sites permit reevaluation of archaeological models for the Transverse Ranges of southern California and the adjacent Mojave Desert. Diagnostic artifacts, site structure, and obsidian hydration dating indicate montane Greven Knoll I (9,400-4,000 BP) occupations in inland southern California several millennia earlier than has been previously posited. Moreover, the presence of stemmed points suggests that the Greven Knoll Pattern of the Encinitas Tradition was introduced into the region directly from the Mojave Desert during the onset of the Altithermal. This analysis also serves as a reminder for archaeologists to use ethnohistoric models with caution and to look beyond the obvious. RESUMEN Rock Camp (CA-SBR-342) en las San Bernardino Mountains ha sido considerado como un campamento base de procesamiento de bellotas estacionales del Complejo Prehistórico Tardío desde que fue excavado en la década de 1960. El reanálisis de sus colecciones y las nuevas investigaciones en los sitios cercanos de Willow Creek Crossing permiten reevaluar los modelos arqueológicos para las Transverse Range y el adyacente Mojave Desert. Los artefactos, la estructura del sitio, y obsidiana indican ocupaciones montanas de Greven Knoll I (9,400-4,000 BP) en el interior varios milenios antes de lo que se había postulado anteriormente. Además, la presencia de puntos de tallo sugiere que el Greven Knoll de la
Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, 2021
Alongside other Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cultural values, Gerald Vizenor’s (Whi... more Alongside other Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies, and cultural values, Gerald Vizenor’s (White Earth Nation) concept of survivance has become an increasingly popular interpretive perspective in Indigenous archaeology and related fields of heritage management. Survivance is a powerful Indigenous condition that enables the rejection of Indigenous victimhood. Archaeologists are positively adapting survivance to work with archaeological perspectives on materiality and social practice to challenge false representations of Indigenous peoples as racially inauthentic and/or figuratively extinct in academic and public heritage discourses. However, questions linger over the depth and breadth of archaeologists’ engagement with Vizenor’s broader project of Indigenous healing (i.e., “socio-acupuncture”) given different but persistently generalized middle-range theorizations of survivance in archaeological research. In this chapter, I provide a brief summary of Vizenor’s survivance and other interrelated concepts, applications of survivance in archaeology, and an example of archaeological survivance storytelling that emerged specifically through my research partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, and Payómkawichum peoples of the Los Angeles Basin (LA Basin) in Southern California.
The Archaeology of Place and Space in the West, 2021
The Black Star Canyon (Puhu) Village (CA-ORA-132; CHL #217) is famously known as the location of ... more The Black Star Canyon (Puhu) Village (CA-ORA-132; CHL #217) is famously known as the location of the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de Los Indios”, during which, a Native American encampment was massacred as a reprisal for stealing horses. The village underwent multiple archaeological excavations during the 1930s and 1950s and was officially memorialized as a California Historical Landmark. Problematically, the archaeological collections produced from said projects were never analyzed or published, and in the vacuum of empirical study, the massacre account has dominated the contemporary Orange County folklore. Folkloric beliefs held by the public are dominated by a “dark heritage” concerned with Indigenous extinction. In order to fully understand the village landmark’s past and effects on the Orange County public in the present, this paper highlights how the site’s features of historicity reproduced anti-Indigenous public heritage discourse on physical/cultural erasures through a failure to properly engage with Indigenous peoples (past and present) and the archaeological dimensions of place.
Re-Assembling Radical Indigenous Autonomy in the Alta California Hinterlands: Survivance at Puhú, 2020
Conducted in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework in
partnership with Tongva... more Conducted in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework in partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, (Blas Adobe Aguliar Museum, Juaneño– Acjachemen Culture Center) and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians) peoples, this dissertation is an Indigenous Archaeology study of the California Historic Landmark (CHL#217; CA-ORA-132 and CA-ORA-317) Black Star Canyon Puhú Village site in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, California. The landmark memorializes the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de los Indios”. Indigenous occupants of the Puhú village were accused of stealing horses from local colonial settlers over several months, after which, the village was razed by hired American frontiersmen. I integrate perspectives from descendant collaborators, Indigenous survivance, philosophies of historicity, guerilla resistance, Practice Theory, and Assemblage Theory in the analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical data collected from five years of interviews, archival research, surveys, excavations, and laboratory research under the Black Star Canyon Archaeology Project (BSCAP). The result of my archaeological and ethnoarchival research reveals how the Puhú occupants exercised economic and political traditions within and beyond the village to exceed a condition of bare survival or micropolitical resistance after colonization. This study facilitates new attention to enduring communal scale Indigenous traditions associated with macropolitical forms of autonomy and prosperity in the Los Angeles Basin proximal colonial hinterlands. In doing so, the archaeological study is envisioned as facilitating a mode of Indigenous survivance-storytelling by challenging the foundations of colonial historiography associated with the landmark.
Post-colonial studies have facilitated understandings about indigenous Californians' responses to... more Post-colonial studies have facilitated understandings about indigenous Californians' responses to colonial oppression by drawing attention to the maintenance of 'traditional practices.' The endurance of traditional practices outside of colonial institutions in landscapes of indigenous life and memory further moved California colonial archaeology towards a renewed focus on autonomy. Similar perspectives were developed by Native American scholars, notably Gerald Vizenor's (1994, 2008) notion of survivance, but have yet to be broadly realized. This paper outlines tensions with California archaeology's colonial roots and the relationship between persistence and autonomy to illustrate how tensions can be eased by embracing the concept of survivances, and the actual survivances of indigenous peoples. This paper is a modified version of the opening presentation given at the session "Leaving the master's tools: shifting towards an analytic of survivance in California archaeology," modified to include comments by the discussant, Desireé Martinez.
This preliminary report provides information regarding archaeological investigations conducted du... more This preliminary report provides information regarding archaeological investigations conducted during May of 2017 at the Black Star Canyon Village site (California Historical Landmark #217, CA-ORA-132/317) in the Mariposa Reserve in Silverado, Orange County, California in compliance with “The Wildlands Conservancy Mariposa Reserve Permit For Archaeological Investigations”. Field investigations were focused on re-excavating areas of the Black Star Canyon Village that were sampled by previous archaeological projects (i.e. the Archaeological Survey Association-ASA 1952-1954 project), mapping said excavation, and collecting artifacts for subsequent analyses.
Report on the Reassessment of the Black Star Canyon Village Site Collections at the Bowers Museum, 2017
This collections report focuses on the principle investigator’s work on reassessing the collectio... more This collections report focuses on the principle investigator’s work on reassessing the collections and their excavation contexts during the 1930s Work Progress Administration (WPA) and California State Relief Administration (SERA) housed at the Bowers Museum. In the fall of 2016, the principle investigator was granted permission by the Bowers Museum to assess the WPA/SERA excavated collection, and began the catalog assessment process in the winter of 2017. The catalog assessment was undertaken and completed at the Bowers Museum’s curation facility in the spring of 2017. Prior to the evaluation of the WPA/SERA work, collections from the later 1950s Archaeological Survey Association (ASA) project at the Black Star Canyon Village were completely cataloged for the first time in the winter of 2016 with a completed provenience analysis in the fall of 2017. The ASA catalog informs the Bower Museum collections reassessment. This report is focused on detailing the cataloging assessment processes of the WPA collection, with a short synthesis of the later ASA excavation project at the Black Star village.
Chemical residue analysis was used in this study to identify the contents of 10 glass medicinal b... more Chemical residue analysis was used in this study to identify the contents of 10 glass medicinal bottles and vials in the nineteenth-century Market Street Chinatown collection from San Jose, California. Analyses were carried out using both classical techniques and modern instrumental methods. Chemical changes in the analytes, brought about by prolonged environmental exposure, introduced an unavoidable degree of uncertainty into all chemical identifications. Seven bottles yielded residues most likely representing mineral-based “stone drugs” used to treat a variety of ailments in traditional Chinese medicine. Three bottles contained calamine lotion, a zinc-based topical preparation used in both China and North America. These discoveries highlight the role of mineral-based medicines in treating diseases, ameliorating symptoms, and promoting health in nineteenth-century San Jose, California. The study findings also indicate that the location of bottle manufacture and bottle form alone do not provide sufficient information to determine whether a nineteenth-century medicinal bottle contained allopathic, homeopathic, or traditional Chinese medicine.
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Videos by Nathan Acebo
Papers by Nathan Acebo
https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/the-archaeology-of-place-and-space-in-the-west/
Print Publication
partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, (Blas Adobe Aguliar Museum, Juaneño–
Acjachemen Culture Center) and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission
Indians) peoples, this dissertation is an Indigenous Archaeology study of the California
Historic Landmark (CHL#217; CA-ORA-132 and CA-ORA-317) Black Star Canyon
Puhú Village site in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, California. The
landmark memorializes the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de los Indios”. Indigenous
occupants of the Puhú village were accused of stealing horses from local colonial settlers
over several months, after which, the village was razed by hired American frontiersmen.
I integrate perspectives from descendant collaborators, Indigenous survivance,
philosophies of historicity, guerilla resistance, Practice Theory, and Assemblage Theory
in the analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical data collected from five years of
interviews, archival research, surveys, excavations, and laboratory research under the
Black Star Canyon Archaeology Project (BSCAP). The result of my archaeological and
ethnoarchival research reveals how the Puhú occupants exercised economic and political
traditions within and beyond the village to exceed a condition of bare survival or
micropolitical resistance after colonization. This study facilitates new attention to
enduring communal scale Indigenous traditions associated with macropolitical forms of
autonomy and prosperity in the Los Angeles Basin proximal colonial hinterlands. In
doing so, the archaeological study is envisioned as facilitating a mode of Indigenous
survivance-storytelling by challenging the foundations of colonial historiography
associated with the landmark.
Book Reviews by Nathan Acebo
https://uofupress.lib.utah.edu/the-archaeology-of-place-and-space-in-the-west/
Print Publication
partnership with Tongva, Acjachemen, (Blas Adobe Aguliar Museum, Juaneño–
Acjachemen Culture Center) and Payómkawichum (Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission
Indians) peoples, this dissertation is an Indigenous Archaeology study of the California
Historic Landmark (CHL#217; CA-ORA-132 and CA-ORA-317) Black Star Canyon
Puhú Village site in the Santa Ana Mountains of Orange County, California. The
landmark memorializes the 1832 CE “Battle in Cañón de los Indios”. Indigenous
occupants of the Puhú village were accused of stealing horses from local colonial settlers
over several months, after which, the village was razed by hired American frontiersmen.
I integrate perspectives from descendant collaborators, Indigenous survivance,
philosophies of historicity, guerilla resistance, Practice Theory, and Assemblage Theory
in the analysis of archaeological and ethnohistorical data collected from five years of
interviews, archival research, surveys, excavations, and laboratory research under the
Black Star Canyon Archaeology Project (BSCAP). The result of my archaeological and
ethnoarchival research reveals how the Puhú occupants exercised economic and political
traditions within and beyond the village to exceed a condition of bare survival or
micropolitical resistance after colonization. This study facilitates new attention to
enduring communal scale Indigenous traditions associated with macropolitical forms of
autonomy and prosperity in the Los Angeles Basin proximal colonial hinterlands. In
doing so, the archaeological study is envisioned as facilitating a mode of Indigenous
survivance-storytelling by challenging the foundations of colonial historiography
associated with the landmark.