Considering arguments that the unique ecological conditions that exist in maritime environments encouraged reduced residential mobility and hastened the development of socially and politically complex hunter-gatherer societies examination of the development of settlement and foraging organization can help clarify our understanding of social and cultural evolution in maritime contexts. The Northern Channel Islands of California consist of four landmasses with relatively profound environmental variation and are therefore well positioned to evaluate mobility in a maritime context. While previous mobility hypotheses have been formed for the Early Holocene (7500-10,000 BP) on the Northern Channel Islands, these hypotheses included minimal data from Santa Cruz Island, the largest and most environmentally diverse landmass within the Northern Channel Island chain. Yet, data from this island are important because the Northern Channel Islands vary in size, environment, and biodiversity. These differences can have a profound effect on foraging and mobility. This is an important issue within anthropology, as generalization of adaptive behavior does not account for local variants that can play a crucial role in cultural development.

To evaluate the nature of mobility during the Early Holocene on Santa Cruz Island resource exploitation, land use, seasonality, and intensity of occupation were examined through artifactual, faunal, and floral data collected during excavations at the five known Early Holocene deposits on Santa Cruz Island. Analyses based on these data included density and diversity analyses of all material, dietary reconstruction using meat weight measures, lithic analysis using size grade ratios, archaeobotanical analysis, oxygen isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating, and various other quantitative measures that were used in both intra- and inter-sites comparisons. Interpretations of these analyses argue that subsistence and settlement decisions were based on locally available resources and the Early Holocene hunter-gatherers on Santa Cruz Island utilized a residentially mobile settlement strategy. The more complex, logistically organized settlement systems of later time periods probably had not yet developed by the end of the Early Holocene on Santa Cruz Island.