The California Archaeological Survey (CAS)

Established in 1948, to study and make known to the general and scientific public the prehistory of the state, the California Archaeological Survey focused on a [systematic scheme for] "collecting and preserving California's prehistoric remains and records concerning them. This series contain[s] occasional reports of Survey progress and activities, brief articles on material culture items, excavation reports, bibliographies of printed archaeological works on topical subjects, areas, and discussions of methodology and archaeological technique."

University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology and Anthropological Records

University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology was established in 1903 and continued until 1964, reporting on "investigations dealing with the native and aboriginal inhabitants of all parts of the state and their ethnology, linguistics, and archaeology.

Pliny Earle Goddard's "Life and Culture of the Hupa," the first volume in the series, reports information obtained during his residence on the Hoopa Valley Reservation between march 1897 and August 1900. Goddard, a student of Linguistics under President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, received an instructorship (1901) in the soon to be established Anthropology Department.

From: Roland B. Dixon 1904 review of "Life and Culture of the Hupa."

Anthropological Records

Beginning in 1937, Anthropological Records took on the task of publishing (in photolithography) monographs which were "primarily documentary, of record nature, or devoted to the presentation primarily of new data." Philip Drucker's Culture Element Distributions: V Southern California, the first in the series, provides data in tabular form regarding the occurrence of culture elements (e.g. artifacts and rituals) among tribes in Southern California.

In his introduction to the series Kroeber notes that "the element method is not primarily a device for juggling statistics by those who would rather compute than think... The essential aspect of the method is its definition of isolable elements, which make possible the more accurate definition and the more penetrating description of cultures—the groundwork of all sound ethnography, old-line or novel."

From: Alfred L. Kroeber 1937 Anthropological Records vol. 1, no. 1, p. 4.

Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility

"The Archaeological Research Facility (ARF) was founded as the California Archaeological Survey (CAS) in 1948 by Professor Robert Heizer. The present name was adopted in 1961 as the University of California at Berkeley's research took on a more international scope." Since 1965 the ARF has published Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility, a series which initially focused on California archaeology, and which now includes South Asia, the South Pacific and Latin America with forthcoming issues to expand the scope to include Egyptian and Eastern European archaeological research.

From: Patrick V. Kirch 1992. Contributions of the University of California Archaeological Research Facility, vol. 50, endpaper.