And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Flap Over Emeryville Indian Bones Archaeologists complain about
city's policy
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/05/20
/MN79452.DTL
Chip Johnson Thursday, May 20, 1999
Some Bay Area archaeologists are up in arms about the way Emeryville
city officials are handling the human remains in a 2,000 year-old Native
American shellmound located beneath the future site
of a home-furnishings store.
Allen Pastron, a well-known urban archaeologist hired by the city to
assess the site, discovered the remains of 17 people in a pile of earth
removed when a holding pond was dug as a precaution to prevent the runoff
of contaminated water into the bay.
In a March 18 letter outlining his preliminary assessment of the site,
Pastron wrote that ``the remnants . . . must be deemed of the greatest
possible archaeological significance.''
Pastron claims that the city ignored his recommendation to conduct a
full-scale excavation -- which could cost up to $3 million and take up to
three months.
Instead, they fired him and hired another firm, which plans to use a
mechanical sifter to screen remains.
Pastron's abrupt dismissal and a city-announced plan to train two Native
American ``monitors'' who lack archaeological experience has provoked a
controversy that appears to be mushrooming.
Everything about the project is in dispute, from the excavation methods
to internal squabbles among Native Americans about who will be selected --
and paid -- to monitor the work.
Since then, a couple of curious archaeologists sympathetic to Pastron have
entered the 20-acre site located just north of the junction of Interstates
580 and 80 to take photographs and see for themselves.
The city responded to their unwelcome sleuthing by hiring a 24- hour-a-day
security guard service and by sending letters that warned violators that
they would be arrested if they didn't turn over
the photographs.
Indeed, Pastron said his fee is being withheld until he surrenders
photographs he took of the site.
One Ohlone descendant believes the city is playing archaeologists against
interested members of the Native American community by portraying
archaeologists as grave robbers without cultural conscience.
The Emeryville shellmound is widely regarded as the most significant in
Northern California, our most vivid historic link to the Bay Area's
original civilization. Since the turn of the century, there have
been numerous archaeological excavations and finds there.
At the same, it has been subject to development and the soil has been
graded and excavated and handled badly.
Both sides of the dispute would probably agree that artifacts and human
remains have been spread across the property in question, where an IKEA
store is slated to be built.
<<END EXCERPT>>
city really wants is to achieve a balance
between the site's cultural significance and
the need to remove toxic waste created by
recently demolished pesticide and paint
manufacturing plants.
Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
doctrine of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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