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.
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.