Dr. Jones joined the Cal Poly faculty in 1998. His research interests include North American prehistory, hunter-gatherer ecology, and maritime adaptations. His area of geographic expertise is the central California coast, where he has conducted field research for the last 25 years. He is actively involved in several major scholarly debates-- one concerning the possible impacts of late Holocene climatic variability on Native populations of western North America, another involving prehistoric overexploitation of marine mammals in the northeastern Pacific,and most recently, prehistoric Polynesian contact with the New World. He is a former southern Vice President of the Society for California Archaeology.
Articles
Where were the northern elephant seals? Holocene archaeology and biogeography of Mirounga angustirostris (with Torben C. Rick, Robert L. DeLong, Jon M. Erlandson, Todd J. Braje, Jeanne E. Arnold, Matthew R. Des Lauriers, William R. Hildebrandt, Douglas J. Kennett, Rene L. Vellanoweth, and Thomas A. Wake), The Holocene (2011)
Driven to the brink of extinction during the nineteenth century commercial fur and oil trade,...
Review of Kathleen L. Hull, Pestilence and Persistence: Yosemite Indian Demography and Culture in Colonial California, Current Anthropology (2011)
Explaining Prehistoric Variation in the Abundance of Large Prey: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of Deer and Rabbit Hunting Along the Pecho Coast of Central California (with Brian F. Codding and Judith F. Porcasi), Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2010)
Three main hypotheses are commonly employed to explain diachronic variation in the relative abundance of...
A Trans-Holocene Archaeological Record of Guadalupe Fur Seals (Arctocephalus Townsendi) on the California Coast (with Torben C. Rick, Robert L. DeLong, Jon M. Erlandson, Todd J. Braje, Douglas J. Kennett, Thomas A. Wake, and Phillip L. Walker), Marine Mammal Science (2009)
California archaeological record consistent with Younger Dryas disruptive event, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2008)
Book Chapters
Toward a Prehistory of the Southern Sea Otter (Enhydra lutis nereis) (with Brendan J. Culleton, Shawn Larson, Sarah Mellinger, and Judith F. Porcasi), Human Impacts on Seals, Sea Lions, and Sea Otters: Integrating Archaeology and Ecology in the Northeast Pacific (2011)
Culture or Adaptation: Milling Stone Reconsidered, Monographs in California and Great Basin Anthropology - Avocados to Millingstones: Papers in Honor of D.L. True (2008)
Of interest to D. L. True throughout his career was the California Milling Stone Horizon,...
The Prehistory of Big Creek, Views of a Coastal Wilderness: Twenty Years of Research at Big Creek Reserve (2001)
Archaeological research began at Big Creek in 1983 with the first of four summer field...