Stable Isotope Provenance Analysis of Olivella Shell Beads From the Los Angeles Basin and San Nicolas Island

Production of marine shell beads in island and coastal settings was an important activity in prehistory, with important political and economic ties. Currently, there are fewmethods to track beads to their locus of pro-duction. Examining the spatial distribution of bead types provides one methodof doing so. Chemical and stable isotopicmethods provideanad-ditional and independentmeans of testing hypotheses generated by spa-tial distributions. We use stable oxygen, carbon, and strontium isotope data to reconstruct provenance zones for 18Olivella biplicatabeads from the Los Angeles Basin and San Nicolas Island, California. We compare the results to isotopic data from modern and radiocarbon-dated whole shells collected along the Pacific Coast. Results indicate that all 18 beads were manufactured from shells growing in open coast locations sout