V
News from Inciten Country
Page 8 Spilyay Tymoo April 29, 2004
Archaeological site on coast holds ocean
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.
(AP) - Rubbish dug a genera
tion ago from an occanside ar
chaeological site first occupied
around 8,000 B.C. is being re
examined for clues that could
bolster the theory some of the
first Americans to stream into
the New World hugged the Pa
cific coast, reaping the bounty
of the land and the sea.
This month, anthropologist
Terry Jones and his colleagues
began poring over the estimated
10,000 to 15,000 broken bones
and shells, salvaged in excava
tions hastily carried out 36 years
ago to make way for construc
tion of a nuclear power plant
on the Central California coast.
Now, more exhaustive analy
sis could support the controver
sial idea that some pioneering
Paleo-Indians moved into North
America along the West Coast,
skipping inland routes that tra
ditionally have been considered
the most likely avenues into the
continent from Asia.
"If you have, very early,
people pursuing a life that's dif
ferent from that of the big game
hunters, that could suggest a
different people and a different
entry route," said Jones, 49, of
Victim's body exhumed in U.S.
and returned to Canadian home
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -The
family of a slain American
Indian activist exhumed her re
mains from an Oglala cemetery
recendy so they can be rebur
ied on her home reservation in
Nova Scotia, Canada.
Denise Maloney of Toronto,
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash's older .
daughter, also issued a statement
saying the family plans to give
prosecutors an audio tape tran
script implicating American In
dian Movement leaders in the
1975 death.
Maloney, executive director
of Indigenous Women for Jus
tice, wrote her mother "began
her journey home this morning
... to the warmth and security
of her family and people - to
be near their hearts, for inside
their hearts is where her spirit
has always been."
Aquash was killed on the
Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
nearly three decades ago be
Activists cast vote
to increase turnout
WASHINGTON (AP) -American
Indian leaders are
working to get 1 million new
Indian voters to the polls in
November, a significant increase
from a historically neglected
minority that by chance and ge
ography could decide which
party controls the Senate.
"In about half of the com
petitive Senate races, Native
Americans are going to be highly
courted," said David Magleby,
dean of social sciences at
Brigham Young University. "I
think that Republicans and
Democrats alike believe this is
going to be a major priority."
In Senate races in Alaska,
Oklahoma, South Dakota and
Colorado, American Indian vot
ers, though small in numbers,
could determine the winner.
Republicans have recognized
the risk in not courting the In
dian vote, and are making un
precedented efforts to make
inroads in what has historically
been an overwhelmingly Demo
cratic constituency.
"The days are past where one
party took you for granted so
they didn't court your votes, and
the other party didn't know you
existed," Sen. Ben Nighthorse
Campbell, R-Cola, the Senate's
California Polytechnic State
University, San Luis Obispo.
At the time the site was origi
nally excavated, archaeologists
focused on the rich assortment
of skeletons, stone tools, fish
hooks, whistles and other arti
facts pulled from the layers
upon layers - stacked more than
12 feet deep - of detritus. They
carried out only a basic analysis
of the accompanying bits and
pieces of long-dead otters, seals,
deer, fish and other creatures
and then placed them in stor
age. "The bones have been lying
in bags since 1968, waiting for
someone to look at them," Jones
said.
That garbage now may prove
to be gold.
Scientists believe the collec
tion of bone and shell is unpar
alleled in both its size and its
sweep, since it traces - appar
ently without interruption - a
staggering 10,000 years or more
of persistent occupation of the
site, which sits perched on a
bluff 60 feet above a half-moon
cove.
"It was certainly one of the
major villages along the entire
Central Coast," said Roberta
cause AIM leaders suspected
her of being a government spy,
according to witnesses at the
trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, one
of two men charged with the
murder. He was convicted in
February and is to be sentenced
Friday to life in prison.
Looking Cloud's new lawyer,
Terry Gilbert, said recently he
may request that DNA samples
be taken from Aquash's remains
to determine if she was raped.
"If it's somebody that has no
connection so far to this case,
that could be a revelation and
call into question the credibility
of the entire investigation," he
said.
John Graham has pleaded
not guilty and plans to fight ex
tradition from Canada.
"Piece by piece, the 28-year
lie is being dismanded and those
who conspired and ordered the
murder of Anna Mae are being
exposed," Maloney wrote.
only Indian member, told a re
cent gathering of Indian lead
ers. There are 4.3 million Ameri
can Indians nationwide, nearly
3 million over the age of 18,
according to the Census Bureau.
Nationally, Indians make up just
1.4 percent of the voting-age
population. But this year the
highest concentrations are in
states with tight races.
"It has to do not with their
total population. It has to do
with where they're distributed,"
said Magleby. "If the Demo
crats think they can get to 50 in
the Senate, then all of the sud
den the Native American vote
in Alaska and South Dakota
could determine who controls
the Senate."
The National Congress of
American Indians, the nation's
largest Indian organization, is
orchestrating the nonpartisan
voter registration efforts, coor
dinating with Indian organiza
tions on reservations and minor
ity advocates in areas with high
native concentrations.
Volunteers are knocking on
doors and setting up booths at
fairs and reservation gatherings,
said Jacqueline Johnson, NCAI
executive director.
Greenwood, the Los Angeles
archaeologist who led the origi
nal dig.
Sorting, identifying and cata
loging the remains should give
scientists a fuller picture of how
the village's inhabitants lived
through the ages, including the
range and number of species
they hunted and fished, Jones
said.
On a recent afternoon,
Judith Porcasi, 64, and Angela
Barrios, 25, sat side-by-side sift
ing through crinkled, brown
bags of remains, separating the
spoils into neat piles: bird, mam
mal, shellfish, fish and artifact
"You've got a piece of bunny
in with the fish. You can't do
that," Porcasi gently scolded
Barrios at one point.
Eventually, statistical analysis
of the jumbled remains will al
low "patterns to emerge," Porcasi
said.
The dig site lies about 12
miles southwest of modern-day
San Luis Obispo. It is pardy oc
cupied by Pacific Gas & Elec
tric Co.'s hulking Diablo Canyon
Power Plant. Only a small per
centage of the site was exca
vated; the bulk likely remains
intact, Greenwood said.
At Looking Cloud's trial,
former AIM chairman John
Trudell testified he believes Gra
ham, Looking Cloud and AIM
member Theda Clarke were or
dered to kill Aquash.
Maloney said the family will
turn over a transcript of a tape
of AIM co-founder Vernon
Bellecourt in which he allegedly
acknowledges investigating
Aquash because of evidence
she was an informant. On the
tape, he also allegedly says Gra
ham, Looking Cloud and Clarke
kidnapped Aquash, drove her to
places where she was held, ques
tioned about being an informant
and then killed, Maloney said.
Bellecourt denied it. "To this
day I don't know who shot Anna
Mae Aquash," he said.
Clarke has not been charged,
and lives in a nursing home.
Prosecutors have refused to
say if anyone else will be indicted.
Aquash was among the Indi
ans who occupied Wounded
Knee in 1973 - a standoff that
became a symbol of 1970s In
dian conflicts.
Buy -
Anything
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Although little heralded,
Diablo Canyon may be the old
est mainland coastal site any
where in North America -something
further carbon dat
ing planned by Jones could con
firm. The dating work done at the
time of the original excavations
was met with skepticism, since
it came up with ages far older
than anything else from the re
gion known at the time.
"It was a huge surprise.
'Bombshell' might be appropri
ate," Greenwood said.
If the ages hold up through
testing planned for the summer,
they could bolster claims made
by some scientists that separate,
coastal-dwelling populations of
humans were among the early
colonizers of the New World,
moving in pulses independent of
the big-game-hunters thought to
have traveled by inland routes
at the dwindling of the last Ice
Age.
"That's what the smart
money is on, on the coastal mi
gration. It's just that it's a whole
lot easier to compete on the coast
than it is on the tundra. You get
a good mammoth, yeah, it will
last you a long time, if you have
facilities to take care of it - but
most didn't. But if you came
down the coast, you've always
got groceries," said Dennis
Stanford, of the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum
of Natural History.
The remains dug from six
locations strung along a short
stretch of coast represent the
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dozens and dozens of species
that nourished the native Ameri
cans who occupied Diablo Can
yon from as early as 8420 B.C
until the first European explor
ers reached the region in A.D.
1769.
The refuse heap, or midden
preserved evidence of more
than 70 species of mollusk
alone - a number likely un
matched by the offerings of any
present-day seafood market.
Mussels were an apparent fa
vorite. Jones is especially interested
in sea otters, which were hunted
for food and their pelts, Tracing
the history of their exploitation
as a species should dispel no
tions that Europeans stumbled
on a pristine environment in the
18th century, Jones said.
"We should think of it as an
environment harvested for
10,000 years. It's naive to think
that harvesting didn't have
some kind of effect," Jones
said.
Preliminary analysis pub
lished by Greenwood in 1972
suggested no drastic shifts in the
diet of the site's inhabitants over
thousands of years, nor much
change in the artifacts they pro
duced. That consistency suggests the
people were established exploit
ers of the resources available to
them on the coast and not nec
essarily Ice Age big-game-hunters
who suddenly developed a
taste for seafood, Jones said.
"They seem to have a coastal
adaptation from Day One," he
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said.
Even older remains, dating as
far back as perhaps 1 1,000 B.C.,
have been found on the Chan
nel Islands off the Southern
California coast.
That suggests the people who
called the region home were
navigating the open ocean nearly
contemporaneously with the
Clovis people, who hunted large
mammals farther inland.
"Once you had that figured
out, oceans, rivers and big lakes
became highways rather than
barriers. The water is actually
going to facilitate the spread of
cultures and ideas. That's what
we're looking at. People dissed
it for years. I am not at all sur
prised you have a huge 10,000-year-old
midden there on the
California coast," Stanford said.
Archaeologists have yet to
find any coastal evidence that
predates what's been discovered
at Clovis sites farther inland -nor
might they with any ease.
The rise in sea level that in
undated the Bering land bridge
that connected Asia with the
Americas presumably flooded
any coastal sites that might have
been occupied before about
12,000 B.C.
"Finding the hard evidence,
the field evidence, the concrete
evidence - like finding a site
that's older than anything inland
- is eluding us," said Gary
Haynes, a University of Ne
vada, Reno, anthropologist and
theory skeptic. "When that evi
dence comes in, I will be glad to
say the coast was first."
of Warm Springs