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Figure 2. CA-LAN-2464 site overview, looking southeast.

unavoidable for suppression activities along that ridge. It was the same contingency fireline system that
was reopened during the early operational periods of the Day Fire.
Initial 2006 reconnaissance observed that the mechanized equipment had scraped the site and
spread the deposits across the saddle landform. The dozer tracks indicated extensive displacement of fire-
affected rock and ashy soil, obscuring the boundaries of the site, which had been largely indistinct (Figure
3). Decision was then made to determine the extent of site damage, by removal of displaced matrix in
order to prevent comingling of intact site deposits with material that was out of context.
The data value of subsurface oven deposits directly correlates with their integrity. In general, an
oven deposit which lacks integrity yields very little information of value, beyond providing data in a
landscape approach. Oven features with intact deposits may yield relatively detailed information
regarding the morphology of ovens, firing technology, and subsistence data, through investigation of
internal structure and stratigraphy, delineation of horizontal dimensions and vertical extent, and
assessment of observable degree of impacts from post-abandonment processes (Milburn1998a; Wessel
and McIntyre 1990). The undertaking served as a twofold opportunity: to repair the damage to the site
from the suppression activities, while restoring the site to its pre-incident condition in such a manner that
future suppression impacts would not affect the remaining contextual information present within the
matrix.

Setting
The Paradise Ranch Knoll Earth Oven site is located within the ethnographic boundaries of the Takic-
speaking Tataviam, whose territories ethnographically occupied the Upper Santa Clara River drainage,
roughly corresponding with the modern Santa Clarita Valley. Their range covered an area extending from
portions of Piru Creek in the west to the frontiers of the Antelope Valley in the modern

SCA Proceedings, Volume 22 (2009) Vance, p. 3