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CULTURAL RESOURCES <br /> Environmental Setting <br /> The parcel , like much of San Joaquin County, has been farmland <br /> since before the turn of the century. Because it is part of a river <br /> floodplain, the site has almost no elevation relief. Its elevation <br /> ranges from about 45 to 48 feet above sea level . Temperatures tend to be <br /> hot (85 to 105 degrees) and rainless in the summer. In the winter rainy <br /> season, the temperatures vary more widely, with low temperatures in the <br /> mid-30s. Rainfall averages about 13 inches per year and fluctuates from <br /> about 6 to 20 inches (Ornuff 1974; Storer and Usinger 1963) . <br /> Prior to the arrival of European settlers, the area was frequently <br /> flooded during the winter months and its vegetation was predominantly <br /> composed of native bunch grasses. Weber Slough, a natural drainage that <br /> has been radically altered in the last century, made up an intermittent <br /> riparian (creekside vegetation) corridor, composed of Valley Oaks. Such <br /> a grove grew slightly east of the property, along what remains a rela- <br /> tively unaltered reach of Weber Slough. Almost all indigenous vegetation <br /> has been replaced by European annual grasses and annual crops. Due to <br /> the construction of levees, this area along with thousands of other acres <br /> in the San Joaquin Delta region have been "reclaimed" and made farmable. <br /> The project site is located in what was previously the tribal <br /> territory of the Northern Valley Yokuts, in the vicinity of the boundary <br /> between the Chulamni and Lakisamne tribelets (Wallace 1978) . Given the <br /> semi-nomadic culture of the Northern Valley Yokuts and the incompleteness <br /> of the ethnographic picture, the outlines of their territory are not <br /> clear. They apparently dwelt in the Calaveras and Stanislaus River <br /> watersheds and along the east side of the lower San Joaquin River, <br /> (Kroeber 1925; Latta 1949) . <br /> Little is known of the life and ways of the Native Americans who <br /> occupied the San Joaquin Valley because of the annihilating effect of <br /> early European contact. Like most Californian Indians, the Yokuts were <br /> hunter-gatherers, observing the seasonal cycles of salmon fishing, mammal <br /> 3-50 <br /> 101-39.R4 4/10/89 <br />