Sunk

In September 1892 The San Francisco Morning Call published a series of articles that chronicled the events leading to and after the excavation of an ancient shellmound at the southern edge of the city of Alameda. The first article, titled Graves of Aborigines, included bits of the city’s history, information about the owner of the parcel where the mound was located and how the top was leased and used to grow vegetables. Historical maps of Alameda show the southern section of the town as only sparsely populated and the mound must have been a prominent landmark.

"Sinkers used for fishing"

San Francisco Morning Call, Volume 72

September 26, 1892

Credit: Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research, UC Riverside

The article was written by James H. Griffes, who had recently moved to Alameda from the East Coast and was aware that the mound was not a natural feature and that residents looted large numbers of artifacts in the years after the edge of the mound was clipped for road construction. Importantly, Griffes claimed that there were two mounds close to each other (a situation that would resemble the one at Emeryville) but the smallest of the two hillocks had been obliterated by housing developments. Now the city had plans for more roads and houses and thus seemed clear that by Christmas 1892 also the main shellmound would be gone for good. That notion set Griffes in action: he felt that the mound was too important for California ancient history and at least the artifacts needed to be rescued before it was too late. Griffes also planned for those artifacts to be housed and curated by the California Historical Society whose members, in fact, apprised him about the ancient Indian village.

How he convinced the newspaper to get involved is speculative but after obtaining a permit from the landowner and the lessess, Griffes hired the Aradas, a father and son, with the former claiming previous experience in archaeology both in California and Peru, and in the early afternoon they pushed their spades in the soft anthropogenic soil. As expected, the excavation immediately uncovered a number of ancient skeletons and the journalist showed surprise in the ghastly discovery and left out valuable details about their context in all his articles. The writer noted, however, that the bones were brittle and they could hardly be touched without turning to powder, that some individuals were buried in a sitting position and that some were buried without their crania. Mortars and pestles were also unearthed together with abundant faunal remains, projectile points and large adobe fragments although the former were discarded almost immediately. The day after, a follow up article titled Antiquarian Treasures included a narrative of the second day of excavations and while the tone remained rather enthusiastic it is also clear that the novelty of field archaeology was rapidly dwindling. To the modern day archaeologist two details stand out in the article, one individual was allegedly buried with a metal axe and a whole pottery vessel is featured in one illustration. Both items would be evidence that the Alameda village was still actively used by Bay Area Indians after a contact with the early Mexican and Spanish explorers, a marked difference from the mounds at Berkeley, Emeryville, Richmond and San Mateo that were abandoned decades or centuries before contact. 

Hearst Museum 1-4656

Small mortar

California, Alameda County, Shellmound in Alameda

Collected by John J. Rivers, 1892. Older Collections of the University

Hot weather, fatigue and the sheer number of relics convinced Griffes to prematurely end his own excavations. The same night, however, he called the California Academy of Sciences and asked them if they were willing to take over and on September 13th, Call's readers were informed that following a quick visit by the director and the curator, the Academy agreed to take over the remaining days on the permit obtained by The Call and would immediately commence additional excavations, which were expected to achieve even greater results. At the same time, now fully persuaded of the scientific value of his excavation, Griffes closed the article voicing his regrets about the final destination of the items he collected. The relics were originally thought to be curated by the California Historical Society but he now called the suggestion unadvisable because:

The Society exists scarcely but in name at present, it has no permanent museum or exhibition and would hardly know what to do with the valuable collection. [...] The Call's only wish in the matter is to dispose of the precious relics in such a manner as will make them of the greatest service to the greatest number. 

Griffes wrote that steps would be taken to reach out to the State University in Berkeley.

The Academy excavations were allegedly very successful and two days later another article was written highlighting the wonderful items that were collected and quickly transported to San Francisco; Dr. Harkell, director of the academy, was less enthusiastic, however, and he surprisingly depreciated the value of the mound with words that today read rather short sighted: 

This is simply an Indian mound, as The Call has characterized it, but, though very interesting, its relics are not so much of scientific value as of antiquarian interest. 

Harkell’s tepid endorsement notwithstanding, Griffes was successful in reaching out to the University and the upcoming visit by the curator of the museum was later announced with palpable enthusiasm.

Hearst Museum 1-4597
Sinker
California, Alameda County, Shellmound in Alameda
Collected by John J. Rivers, 1892. Older Collections of the University

John James Rivers was an entomologist and he had been the curator of the collections at Berkeley since at least 1873. Back then, the position was not considered particularly prestigious given that it was listed at the very end of the staff directory, after the phone operator and just above the janitorial team. By 1879 it was listed above the gardener and the University Press editor. Yet, the university was in possession of thousands of objects encompassing many disciplines including geology, biology, agriculture, history and anthropology, he was the sole curator and there was no dedicated building. In spite of his academic background, by 1892 J. J. Rivers was recognized as one of the finest antiquarians and experts in ancient Indian objects. During his visit he displayed that expertise by pointing out that the Aradas surely missed many less evident artifacts and while Griffes tried to assure him of the carefulness placed in the excavation Rivers walked around the spoil heap, kicked the soil with his toe and picked up a stone that once brushed from soil turned out to be shaped and perforated. That day a small crowd had gathered at the mound and it was following the university curate’s visit and that gave him an audience for sharing some knowledge about such objects and their use.

That is a sinker. The Indians who once inhabited this mound were great fishermen. They needed sinkers for their lines and nets. They had no lead and so used cobblestones. This sinker was used at the bottom of the line, as you see by the hole in the top of the stone. That hole was drilled by the Indians. They used a different kind of stone to tie on to the nets they cast. Here is one of them.

As he spoke, Rivers kneeled down, picked up and brushed another stone which, to the delight of the onlookers, had groves on two sides. A short time later all the objects from the Call’s excavation were packed and hauled away.

After a few days, on September 26th, the official letter of acceptance from Rivers on behalf of the regents was published. To the benefit of the readers, Rivers praised the Call’s research, listed a number of animals found during the diggings, highlighted some important items and wrote about the use of mortars for processing nuts and, again, about the fishing tools. The final words he offered, however, were only slightly more passionate than Harkell’s:

The relics are of the usual type of shellmound examples. All the Alameda mounds had been superficially examined and collected over.

The sudden flurry of activity around the ancient mound had come to an end.

Hearst Museum 1-4762

Sinker

California, Alameda County, Shellmound in Alameda

Collected by John J. Rivers, 1892. Older Collections of the University

Rivers was correct with regard to Alameda County as many ancient Indian mounds in the county were well-known; portions of the mound at Emeryville had been chipped away since 1850, the same for the West Berkeley and the Strawberry Creek villages. Only a handful of the thousands of ancient artifacts removed from them arrived at Berkeley but, in his care, Rivers also had objects and skeletal remains from other counties surrounding the Bay and he was definitely well positioned for learning first hand about the material culture of Bay Area Indians.

One important and sizable collection that had been donated to the university at least two decades earlier originated from the work of Charles D. Voy, a businessman who used his considerable financial resources to travel and collect natural and ethnographic specimens from many parts of the world. Later in life he dedicated his efforts to the excavation of mounds in San Francisco, Vallejo, Rio Vista, Sausalito, and Brooklyn (now part of West Oakland). The latter was probably very large since it was the only shellmound noted in a map produced by the State Geological Survey of 1874 but according to Nelson’s survey of 1909 not much was left of it, like many other mounds it had been leveled to make room for housing and the railroad tracks for the bustling Oakland port. The obliteration of California ancient history was gaining speed.

Hearst Museum 1-16414

Short pestle

California, Alameda County, Brooklyn Shellmound

Collected by Charles D. Voy, 1872. Older Collections of the University

The Call published Voy’s death notice in 1894, the same year it printed a short announcement that the Academy had organized a symposium about prehistoric mounds in North America and Arabia; a lecture by Dr. Hittell specific to the Alameda mound was advertised and readers were suggested to participate. Like Voy, however, James Griffes was no longer around to attend the event: he had moved to South California shortly after the atrocious murder of his wife in a San Francisco saloon on June 28, 1893. This story came to fame again in recent times with the proliferation of podcasts and blogs dedicated to unsolved or particularly gruesome murders.

Years went by with no updates on the Alameda mound until 1908 when the city bought part of the mound parcel to establish Lincoln Park and while preparing the grounds the workmen apparently discovered more than 400 burials and countless artifacts some of which were transferred to the newly established Alameda Public Library but, if they did, I doubt that they could still be there. In 1911 the city accepted the suggestion to place a stone monument and a plaque commemorating the ancient mound in the park and it took three years to accomplish it. The unveiling ceremony in 1914 was attended by anthropology professor Thomas T. Waterman who was accompanied by Ishi, the Yahi man who was living at the University since three years earlier and was quite famous. The Call had featured him many times over the years and those articles have a great historical value for the story of the man then considered the last Indian of California. But no reporter for the Call was present on that day as the newspaper ceased publication in 1913 after 23 years of history. 

Hearst Museum 15-21019

Unveiling of Indian Monument in Lincoln Park; Ishi in background

California, Alameda County, Shellmound in Alameda

Photo by: Copa de Oro Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1914

J. J. Rivers left the University in 1895, Ishi died in 1916 and James Griffes in 1919, with them the story of the excavation at the Alameda mound lost all direct witnesses. Articles from the Oakland Tribune twenty years later (mid 1930’s)  indicate that nobody could tell exactly where many objects and burials removed from the mound over the years ended up. In fact, it is likely that the Academy excavation was lost in the 1906 earthquake, the Alameda Library called for private collectors to donate their objects but few appeared to be inclined, and even what is left here at the University seems too sparse to reflect the alleged number of items removed in 1892.

Lincoln Park is still there today but the monument was vandalized causing the plaque to be removed in 1981. It was inscribed with a poem written by Mary Cameron Benjamin that tellingly ended with the words Lest we forget - lest we forget.

Accent

March 12th, a student, carrying a brand new trowel, bent down, observing something unusual on the ground. After a second's contemplation, he got up. "No, it's nothing," he said, then walked a few feet more before he bent over again. This time he called to a friend for help. They both began loosening the soil with their trowels. All over an area of a quarter mile, groups of men and women were doing the same thing.

These are the opening sentences in the notebook of A. Neal Hand, a Berkeley undergraduate student enrolled in Anthropology 195 in the Spring of 1958. In addition to the weekly lectures, the students were required to participate in field activities during weekends and for them professor René Millon had planned a survey of part of Sonoma County followed by two months of excavation in a prehistoric mound in Contra Costa. The initial survey was conceived to cover sites that were already known but some students took the initiative to record additional interesting locations like the old adobe shack featured in the photo below. Like many times before, at the end of the quarter all the objects collected by the students were cataloged under one accession number and the documentation filed in a binder bearing the same number. A peculiarity of these accessions is that in addition to the standard feature, stratigraphy and burial forms, the binders sometimes contained the student notebooks and, when required for their final grade, a more comprehensive paper, photos and drawings.

a student standing in front of the adobe shack, Sonoma County
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Josepha Haveman, March 1958

Since the early fifties, the popularity of archaeology classes at Berkeley increased year after year and courses similar to Anthro 195 were then scheduled  at least every other semester or quarter, early on in conjunction with projects organized by the California Archaeological Survey and after 1961 under the auspices of the Department and the Archaeological Research Facility. The last group of undergraduate students to participate in a field class, enrolled in the Spring 1973 and excavated a site in Napa County under the direction of Thomas Hester. In two decades, students went as far as Nevada and Oregon, although over time, some places became more popular than others: the Philippi Ranch site was excavated for eight consecutive classes between 1950 and 1954; the Hotchkiss Mound was visited multiple times between 1953 and 1968; Napa Valley, with its numerous sites, was the most rewarding area in terms of sheer number of objects collected and accessioned by the museum. Undergraduate students are currently credited for about 30.000 catalog records, a number that is destined to grow as we continue working on the archives and database.

students working in a trench at the Philippi site, Fall 1951
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Clement Meighan

Few months ago we had the chance to look into one archaeological collection with a long and convoluted history. Twenty five boxes of materials excavated in Napa Valley in the Springs of 1969 and 1970 under the direction of James Bennyhoff were delivered to the museum in 1985, via the University of Texas. 1970 was a seminal year for political and student unrest and 1970 - yet unbeknownst to him - was also going to be Bennyhoff last teaching experience at Berkeley, both events contributed to the tortuous and long way the material came back to California. My colleagues in Registration and Collections are taking care of the catalog and proper storage of this large assemblage, I am looking at the box of documents that came with it. What I found where few yellowish maps, two or three rolls of black and white film, few photographs, and two large binders of students field notes for a total of 1600 pages! So far, I haven't had the time to sit down and read them all but I have digitized them and so they can be used in the cataloging of the materials. I did, however, have the time to skim through some pages knowing by experience that, aside of the more professionally written notes, undergraduate students often added personal thoughts, not necessarily about the archaeological work per se, but also their feeling about it, about their companions, their professors and other aspects of life. Here are some excerpts from those diaries:

Another problem that made itself felt right away, is one of divided attention. There is so much to do, measure, record, draw map, photograph, look for surface material, listen to instruction, etc. etc.

Few days later, the same student grumbled that they couldn't go back to a previous locations to do a better job with their now superior skills. Another student in 1970 wrote at the beginning of the term:

The digging should be quite exciting. The valley is very beautiful and the weather will hopefully remain hot. The ratio of girls to fellows is about 2 or 3 to 1. I must keep my eyes open and hands off(?).

To which prof. Bennyhoff added in pen while grading the paper: you're kidding... Another student described the work done with her daily team and wrote:

We have named our pit "Pit Excedrin" with an as yet to be assigned number; the pit is a headache but we're trying to keep our senses of humor.

On a more somber note, some diaries have brief mentions of the events at Kent State and how UCB responded by cancelling most classes. Some students continued to go to NAP-57 on a volunteer basis (and their paper did not receive a grade) but the mood and the energy are not at their tops and some feel the excavation is now a lost cause. On May 24, 1970, two weeks after the killings at Kent State, one student wrote:

Nothing was done in N8-W3 [a test unit]. I had intended to do some work on my own in the pit but it was too god-awful hot, and I was in a general state of depression, so I did nothing.

That student is now a friend of mine, Preston Staley; he didn't go on to a career in archaeology but he came back to the museum some years ago and volunteered his time on various projects I had with the Egyptian collections. Over the year he told me many stories about the department and the museum in the late sixties and early seventies and they were all very interesting. I regret starting the work on Nap-57 after he left us as he would have been a valuable help.

Most students wrote a final page summarizing the work they had done during the dig, providing some results and personal observations. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, many students walked away from the experience with little intention of continuing a career in archaeology and here is what some wrote:

Thus the value of my first digging experience lies not in what kinds of archaeological theories were or were not borne out by the excavation. rather, the actual taste of digging itself was of the greatest enjoyment to me. Archaeology had always seemed pretty dull to me, but after even a brief initial stint at it, I realize why people become so dedicated to it and have so much fun at it.

I will come away from this dig with mixed feelings, some disillusionment and much experience. It is difficult, for me at least, to grasp the total meaning of the activity I have submerged myself in for some 9 weeks. I wonder now, as I have wondered many times throughout the quarter, whether or not I will be able to stand the pace and exacting diligence it takes to be a professional anthropologist.

There are several extenuating circumstances that will have an effect on the interpretation of Nap 57. Some of these circumstances have to do with the structure of the class, and inevitably the organization of the university, and the many problems that rock its serenity. However this is no place for such discussions, I must only assume that they are taken into consideration. The circumstances that regard the site Napa 57 are the fact that it was pot hunted in 1930, it has been plowed and is now a walnut orchard, all of which devalue its importance as a site and put question on the information that may be accumulated here.

Anthro 133 students weeding the surface of the Peripoli site.
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives

Photo by Donna Schmit, May 1969

Unfortunately, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to compile a comprehensive list of all the students who attended these classes in two decades but many of their names remain as signatures on the feature and burial sheets they filled while in the field. I admit I fancy searching the internet to see if any of them actually continued to study archaeology and made a career within the discipline. And I found many: among others, Clement Meighan, Sonia Ragir, Sylvia Broadbent and Gordon Grosscup had successful teaching careers; Frank Norick, Eugene Prince and Albert Elsasser ended up working for many years in this museum while Josepha Haveman, Patrick Hallinan and others experienced a shorter period of employment at Berkeley. In the final years of field classes, it is possible that some students found themselves working for CRM companies that started to flourish in those years rather than continue studying for an academic career.
Back in the Spring of 1958, a week of heavy rain ended the survey for the Anthro 195 class and only four students volunteered to drive to Sonoma County the last Sunday of April. One of them was A. Neal Hand and he described in his journal the final event of the survey.

Bennyhoff led this group into an orchard made swamplike by the rain. As one stepped through the ooze he made deep puddles.
A farmer stomped out of a nearby house and skated angrily down the dirt road in the pouring rain. Bennyhoff went to meet him.
"Yew git off this land!"
"We were just looking for..."
"Git off!"
"... the owner. Where is he?"
"Ah ain't sayin."
"What's your name?"
"Ain't sayin."
"... we're from the University of California and are surveying this site"
"In this rain?"
"Won't you tell us where the owner is so we can get permission to continue?"
"No!... Well he's in New York"
"Won't you tell me your name?"
"NO! Now git!"
"The University of California won't appreciate this"
"Sonny, I've been to school, too. Now git!"
The group went.

The above is not the sole attempt to render one person accent or speech to be found in the museum archives. In 1937, Ernest N. Johnson, an amateur collector from Stockton, corresponded with Edward Gifford about his dealings with other collectors of ancient artifacts. One of them, an Italian farmer, had a brief conversation with Johnson about stone pestles found on his property in the Delta and Johnson tried to reproduce that conversation "faithfully":

Yes, we finda one tom-tom; you know, biga rounda longa rock, likea clob, de indian fighta wit. Boy, you hitta one man data tom-tom, breaka da head, sure.

Mindful of my ex wife permanent frustration with my language skills, the day I found the letter I asked my friend Martina: do I sound like this to you? Her answer was a reassuring 'not really' but a few weeks later I was exchanging few words with another colleague about my vacations in Italy when, suddenly, she cheerfully said: oh, your accent got thicker!




students working and engaging with locals at the Hotchkiss Mound.

Archaeologist Richard Ambro☨ looking at the camera.
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives

Photo by C. Clelow, June 1966

Handle

Between 1963 and 1964, Sheldon Rootenberg and his wife Geraldine traveled to Margarita Island, off the north coast of Venezuela, with plans for carrying out an archaeological survey of the island. At that time Rootenberg was a doctoral student at UCLA and the project was intended to provide the basis for his dissertation. In nine months they discovered and mapped about 170 archaeological sites across the island, collected surface materials and probed few sites with small trenches and test pits. Then, with support from a local foundation, they shipped the archaeological materials to Los Angeles to be analyzed and studied. As sometime happens, however, life took a different turn and he never completed his research.

In 1974, Mr. Rootenberg contacted the museum to find a home for the collections and his donation of more than twenty-five boxes was readily accepted by the museum staff. But then, surrounded by many other boxes of archaeological materials from California, Nevada, Africa and Central America that arrived to the museum in the same year, the Rootenberg collection ended up lying uncataloged and unremembered in the off-campus storage for over 40 years.



"tract homes" of La Isleta - alphabetically numbered, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

In the last two years all those materials have been transferred to the museum new storage facility and we had a chance to open lots of dusty boxes, evaluating their contents, and to plan for their future while revisiting their history prior to ending up in Berkeley. For the Margarita Island collection we were able to contact Mr. Rootenberg, and few months ago he came to visit the museum for a conversation about his old project. Five decades later, Sheldon and Geraldine still had vivid memories of that year in Venezuela and they told us stories about the project and some of the people involved in it, gave us clues about the the notes found in the bags and discussed about the maps, the field notes and the Kodachrome slides that had been in his care all these years and are now in the museum archives. The slides are the cherry on top of an already valuable collection; they supply an important addition  to the archaeological record and also furnish colorful, serene, and melancholic at the same time, glimpses of daily life in a landscape that is long gone.

house more than 100 years old east of Flandes, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1963

"outdoor" bar and juke box in El Guamache, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

By the 1960's, only few north American archaeologists had worked in Venezuela and the Caribbean Area, collaboration with local scholars was at its beginning and literature, especially in English, is not abundant and not easy to find in California libraries. But a paper published in 1959 by Cruxent and Rouse, suggested that the islands off the north coast of Venezuela were populated as early as 5000 B.C., first by groups of hunter-gatherers and later by small farming and fishing communities that in time developed an extensive network with other Caribbean islands. In this context, Sheldon Rootenberg saw the opportunity to develop a project that could eventually turn into a doctoral dissertation and successfully applied for funding by arguing that "what is needed now is a number of extensive studies of the various prehistoric and historic stages, and the purpose of this project is to conduct a comprehensive study of the prehistory of the island through archaeological survey and extensive excavation."

Hearst Museum - uncatalogued
potsherd, rim and decorated handle
Venezuela, Margarita Island, Site 87
Collected by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1964

Few weeks before leaving Los Angeles, Rootenberg wrote to Irving Rouse at Yale University presenting his project and asking for comments and advice. Rouse had been involved in Venezuelan archaeology for some years and reminded the young student of previous excavations on the island, with the recommendation to review the old materials for comparison. Additionally he suggested more places of importance for future research and mentioned that his book - Venezuelan Archaeology - was going to be published within few months. Later correspondence between the two tells of some difficulties locating and comfortably viewing the old collections before returning home; and also that the notice of the book being actually published reached the island too late to secure a copy while still in the field. Some frustration is palpable but there is also a lot of excitement over his discoveries of new sites and of distinctive tools made of modified shells, all of it neatly documented in over 150 pages of notes and sketches.
For all that work the collection represents a lasting contribution to Venezuelan archaeology although it was destined to remain Rootenberg's last archaeological adventure. By 1966, prof. Rouse too had moved away from Venezuela to the Caribbean islands, just north of Margarita, to investigate the nature and origins of their early populations.




woman with freckles with cigar and basket on head in Loma de Guerra, Margarita Island
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon  Rootenberg, 1963

costumed men dancing in streets of San Francisco on their "April Fool" day (December 28)
Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives
Photo by Sheldon Rootenberg, 1963

In addition to the progress in the field and exciting discoveries the documents tell another story, one that I am familiar with. The story of a graduate student coping with the ups and downs of doing research in a foreign country for the first time: money is short and everything appears to be much more expensive than at home, the car keeps breaking down in the middle of nowhere and your mattress have seen better days. And if that is not enough, an even bigger challenge is represented by your local colleagues that can be openly skeptic of foreigners and their ideas, and express sudden disappointment (in a different language!) over small things while you feel the pressure of having to impress and convince them over and over. I know how unsettling that could be: I have been through similar situations and not all my archaeological memories are happy ones. But while I will never know why Sheldon Rootenberg parted ways with archaeology, I am sure that if he had gone back to Margarita Island to work with the same people for seven or eight years the way I was fortunate to do, his diaries would have fewer and fewer mentions of those small inconveniences.

Stalk

On May 19, 1904, Joseph Peterson started to dig a trench through the West Berkeley mound, one of the oldest and largest prehistoric shell mounds in Central California. Paid with funding from Phoebe Hearst, he was following the steps of P. M. Jones, E. Furlong and Max Uhle to become one of the earliest field archaeologist to work on behalf of the recently established museum of anthropology. In addition to the excavation at the West Berkeley mound, he was dispatched to an handful of places in the San Francisco Bay area to salvage archaeological materials disturbed by building or road constructions. All these efforts resulted in over 250 catalog records.
It was a busy spring semester, perhaps unexpectedly so, for a 27-year old schoolteacher from Snowflake, Arizona, who had arrived at UC Berkeley just a few months earlier to pursue a degree in Anthropology. Peterson ended up spending only one or two full semesters at Berkeley and by the fall of 1904, he and his family had gone back to Snowflake where his old job was waiting. Leaving Berkeley behind, however, did not sever his ties with archaeology and his academic mentor Alfred Kroeber. In January 1905, Peterson responded to a letter from Kroeber and a plan to begin an exploration of the many ancient ruins around Snowflake began to take shape:

In reply will say that I’ll furnish you the information required as soon as possible. I can give you a rough map of the ruins in this vicinity from memory. It will be useless to visit any of the ruins at present as snow covers the ground to a depth of about 6 inches with no prospects of disappearing for some time.

Kroeber also asked Peterson to gather information on the whereabouts of other expeditions in the area:

With respect to Dr. Palmer’s intentions I can give nothing definite as the last time I saw him I had not received your first letter. I may be able to glean some information from parties who were with him. I was unable to find any of them yesterday. [...]. As far as intruding on his ground is concerned, I think there is sufficient material to avoid this, other than in a general way. Especially is this so if the leading idea or object in view differs. Shall need no funds until we can decide on plans.

Frank Palmer was a Californian antiquarian who, despite a lack of training, had been tasked by the Southwest Society (a branch of the American Institute of Archaeology) to organize an expedition in Arizona. The underlying scope of the project was to collect high-quality artifacts to be exhibited in a new public museum in Los Angeles. While arguably competing for the same treasures Kroeber had a more academic attitude about it. Palmer and other collectors of the time were amateurs, with no proper training in field methodology and, in his words, did little to "bring out points new to science". For the latter to happen amateurs like Palmer should be replaced by trained archaeologists, like Peterson.

Hearst Museum 2-9577
bowl with snake design
Arizona, Navajo County, near Showlow
Collected by Joseph Peterson, 1908

Kroeber was very interested in the archaeological record of the southwestern United States, more so than he was about California archaeology. One of the reasons was that Ancient Pueblo people were farmers and had domesticated animals, they built permanent villages with large buildings that would indicate a level of social complexity that was not yet recognized for hunter-gatherers. Ancient Pueblo people also had a rich tradition of pottery making, and shapes and decorations could be used to distinguish different cultural traditions and to create chronological sequences. California Indians, with few exceptions, didn't rely on domesticated species and while they used clay to create figurines, pipes and other objects, they did not make pottery. That was enough evidence to persuade Kroeber that the lifestyle of California Indians had remained substantially unchanged for thousands of years. He expressed this conviction by dismissing Uhle's interpretation of culture change at Emeryville and, as Heizer recalled years later, effectively limiting archaeological research in Central California by channelling most of the department budget to ethnographic research. But with Peterson in Arizona, Kroeber saw an opportunity to directly acquire valuable archaeological collections for a relatively low cost and with far superior provenience information that those received by exchange with other institutions or those from Phoebe Hearst personal collections.

Hearst Museum 2-9826
paint mortar
Arizona, Navajo County, near Snowflake
Collected by Joseph Peterson, 1907

Kroeber had high expectations for the Arizona project but Peterson could only partially fit the image of a professional field archaeologist. This was not for lack of enthusiasm, however. Between 1906 and 1908, Peterson explored and collected objects from about 25 ruins that likely dated between the 9th and 11th century AD. His notes about provenience and the relationship between objects, features, rooms and burials are well written but ultimately lacking in details and it is unknown if he took any photos while at work. He knew, however, Kroeber's appetite for all things that fit the image of prehistoric farmers and he didn't fail to please his mentor as these clips about turkeys and corn nicely illustrate:

Turkey bones are found in the ruins lower down the river than this game ever comes at present day, and it is reasonable to assume that turkeys were domesticated. I have now on hand a few specimens including 15 or 20 crocks, as many stone specimens, and about 40 smaller articles. I have the complete skeleton of a turkey evidently buried with rites, and about 8 human skeletons.

I enclose under separate cover a stalk of wheat the history of it as reported to me as follows. A party in the Grand Caňon region found in a small vase a few shrunken kernels. How long they had been there is not known as the vase was taken from a ruin. The people who gave me the stalk stated that they received only five of those shrunken kernels from which after three years time they have produced their patch of a few square rods. As I had never seen wheat similar to the specimen I thought I would try at least to find out if it is a common form or if it is something new. The story of its retaining its fertility throughout centuries seems incredible yet the owners gave me the story as a fact.

Hearst Museum 2-8861
stalk
Arizona
Collected by Joseph Peterson, 1906

The letters Peterson wrote to Kroeber tell the story of genuine anthropological fervor not supported by adequate resources and budget as his frequent concerns about shipping charges seem to indicate. The collection includes about 850 catalog records; a substantial number and yet it pales compared to the amount of material amassed by earlier and contemporary expeditions to the Southwest that are now scattered in many museums. The fast-paced spoiling of ancient ruins in many parts of the country led to the Antiquity Act of 1906, something that Peterson acknowledged in a letter as a cause for delays in his plan to explore certain ruins. He never received a permit to work on public land and the project came to an end in July 1908 with Peterson promising to send more maps and reports but the correspondence ends there.
Despite any shortcomings, the Peterson collection was a great achievement and it remains as a testimony of the early days of archaeology as an academic discipline; it was never published but it was exhibited multiple times over the decades. We know that Joseph Peterson traveled to California in 1934: perhaps he had a chance to see his objects in the museum's old Southwest Hall in San Francisco.

P.S. Imagine my surprise when one afternoon few weeks ago a colleague came to tell me that there were visitors in the galleries who said they were Peterson's relatives and they were asking about the collection. I ran upstairs to meet them and we talked for a little bit. The memory of their grandfather days as an archaeologist for UC Berkeley is still alive and so is the connection between them and the Hearst Museum. It was an incredible chance to ask them about old photographs of the excavations that may still be in their possession. If they ever find them I hope they will consider donating them to the museum where they will accompany the Peterson Collection for the next 110 years.

Slab

Philip Mill Jones may well be the least celebrated archaeologist of the early age of the discipline in California. Few months ago I gave a small presentation about the museum and I learned that many graduate students were not familiar with his name. Indeed in 1956 Heizer and Elsasser had noted that while the Uhle's (Peru) and the Reisner's (Egypt) collections became well-known among scholars and students, Jones contribution had been (as of 1956) little recognized. 

Between 1899 and 1901, P. M. Jones was appointed by Mrs. Hearst to conduct field investigation, mostly in California, but in other parts of Western North America as well. Jones was a medical doctor, not an archaeologist. Perhaps for that reason he was primarily interested in ancient Indian burials but he had a keen sense of the scientific nature of his enterprise and pioneered the use of photographs and field notes in California archaeology.

Adobe Holes; top of Mound # 5, showing trench commenced. Man at extreme end of mound

Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives.
Photo by Philip M. Jones, 1901

Jones spent the early months of 1901 on Santa Rosa Island where he investigated thirty five ancient sites that resulted in vast archaeological assemblages now curated in Berkeley*. He wasn't the first one but most of the earlier collectors could be classified simply as looters. Many other archaeological expeditions expanded on Jones' findings in the following decades but a comprehensive body had not yet been produced. Indeed, in his review of Archaeological Investigations on Santa Rosa Island in 1901, William J. Wallace hinted that the editors [Heizer and Elsasser] could have done better justice to Jones' collections from Santa Rosa Island by reevaluating them in light of more recent discoveries rather than limit themselves to transcribe his diaries and field notes. These manuscripts are incredibly valuable and yet disappointing from a modern archaeological standpoint given the lack of drawings and more detailed photographs. They are, however, very descriptive of all aspects of the expeditions. Among other details we know that the crew often operated under bad weather conditions and that Jones himself was frequently feeling sick from cold and flu. Rain, strong winds and fog are mentioned often in his pages. One day in February the crew couldn't leave for the fields because the fog was so thick they could not locate their horses! Many years ago I found myself in a foggy situation when my teammates had to walk next to the car to help me drive along a narrow and steep trail on our way to a cave.

Jones' Horses in Guadalupe, California

Hearst Museum Archaeological Archives.
Photo by Philip M. Jones (?), 1901

I personally find unfortunate that many years later (1972) Robert Heizer decided to dust off Jones' collection to produce another small volume titled California oldest historical relic? The subject of this little pamphlet was a stone slab collected on Santa Rosa Island, which he postulated could be Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo gravestone. It isn't. The main argument is that Cabrillo died on San Miguel Island and he was likely buried there. Afterward the fleet sailed north and reached Oregon before returning to Mexico ending an expedition that most contemporaries considered a failure. They didn't return to Santa Rosa Island: how did the slab travel there?
Philip Mills Jones was not aware of the carvings; he collected this and other similar slabs and thought they were produced and used by Indians, not White explorers or early settlers. Would he collect the slab if he thought it belong to Cabrillo's grave? There is no answer to that question but Jones wasn't necessarily interested in historic, non native, sites. He was also not a scam artist and it is hard to imagine why, in his long prologue about the discovery of the stone, Heizer hinted at the possibility that the slab could be part of an elaborate hoax orchestrated by Jones. It wasn't, of course, and his legacy did not deserve the casting of such doubts many years after his death.

Hearst Museum 1-5086
slab
Southern California, Channel Islands, Santa Rosa Island
Collected by Philip M. Jones, 1901

* Most of the Jones's collection from Santa Rosa Island was hurrily deaccesioned in 2019 and it's no longer curated at the Hearst Museum.

Lump

Eugene A. Golomshtok came to the United States from Russia in 1918, perhaps because of the recent revolution, and received his bachelor degree at Berkeley in December 1922. Since the Fall 1921 Golomshtok is seldom employed by the museum and the records show that he worked in Monterey, Tehama and Shasta counties where he collected archaeological assemblages complemented by a small selection of ethnographic objects and photographs. Some of his early findings were noted by Alfred Kroeber who wrote to the landowner in 1922:
"I was greatly interested in some broken pieces of pottery that Mr. Golomshtok found in Cypress Point. It is too crude and irregular to be of American or of Mexican make, and on the other hand, there has been no previous authentic report of pottery having been manufactured by the Indians of the region"
Despite Kroeber's interest, Golomshtok experience at Berkeley ended in the fall of 1925 and the museum didn't undertake any further archaeological work in the sites he discovered.

Hearst Museum 1-23591

lump

California, Monterey County, CA-Mnt-159

Collected by Eugene A. Golomshtok, 1921

Hearst Museum 1-23556

spear point, broken

California, Monterey County, CA-Mnt-159

Collected by Eugene A. Golomshtok, 1921

An interesting contribution for the Day of Archaeology 2014 said that Golomshtok was affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Museum from 1930 to around 1938, a period he used to travel several times back to Russia on archaeological and ethnographic expeditions. Pre-war times were a period of turmoil in Europe and despite more than one agreement between Germany and Russia, he was no longer able to secure a working visa after 1934.

He spent the following years reading all possible Russian archaeological literature available in the United States and, in 1938, published The Old Stone Age in European Russia that he hoped to be especially useful to those who did not know the Russian language. Golomshtok's thorough survey was highly praised by many reviewers, notably by Sir Gordon Child, but surprisingly it remained the last of his publications. Eugene Golomshtok died in 1950.

Pipe

This is not a pipe.

Hearst Museum 1-243044
pipe
United States; California
Collected by Paul Ruedrich

Bones

When the Department of Anthropology was established in 1901, Professor F. W. Putnam and Professor J. C. Merriam had already conceived the Early Man project; which aimed to add more data to the understanding of the timing of the initial peopling of California and the New World. Before the advent of radiocarbon or other absolute dating methods, the age of Paleolithic sites was inferred through the presence of ancient animals, great depth of the deposit from the surface, or the perceived crudeness of ancient tools.
Between 1899 and 1902, P. M. Jones worked in the Tulare Valley and the Coast between Santa Barbara and Monterey. Putnam, W. J. Sinclair and Merriam studied the Calaveras caves where there was a possible association between extinct fauna and evidence of human activities.
The McCloud River area and Shasta county were also considered important due to earlier discoveries of potentially very old remains "at least several thousands of years." The Department of Anthropology sent two archaeologists in 1902, E. L. Furlong and Sinclair, along with Merriam to excavate a trench in the lower chamber of Potter Creek Cave. The cave is located along the eastern edge of the McCloud River at about 1,500 feet above sea level. It is one of the earliest and most important prehistoric locations investigated by the Hearst Museum. The deposit extended more than 80 inches below surface, an indication the archaeologists took for the great antiquity of the lowest levels. Nearby Samwel Cave was also partially explored the same year. By 1904, Potter Creek and Samwel caves were timely published and Putnam was already looking forward new discoveries:

Besides these two caves there are many other localities, both caves and rock-shelters, where remains occur in this region. Their study offers perhaps the best opportunity that there is for determining the time human first entered this region.



Hearst Museum 1-24327
polished bone
California, Shasta county, Potter Creek Cave
Collected by E. L. Furlong and W. J. Sinclair, 1902




Hearst Museum 1-24325
polished bone
California, Shasta county, Potter Creek Cave
Collected by E. L. Furlong and W. J. Sinclair, 1902

By 1903-1904, Furlong was already a veteran of the archaeological excavations for the museum. By then he had been involved in the excavations of the West Berkeley Shellmound (CA-Ala-307), Hawver Cave (CA-Eld-16) and the Emeryville Shellmound (CA-Ala-309) among other sites. He didn't write or publish much, but left very good notes and drawings of his excavations. The Hearst accounts for about 800 records collected by Furlong.

Tranquillity

The California Central Valley is one place I truly enjoy to visit. The flat landscape, the humid summer heat, old villages and isolated country houses remind me of the Po' river Valley, in north Italy, where I grew up. A few months ago I traveled through the Central Valley on my way back from the annual meeting of the Society for California Archaeology. A few miles to the north of San Joaquin lies the small town of Tranquillity and I stopped there for gasoline and a break from driving. The town, true to its name, was almost deserted and eerily quiet.













outskirts of Tranquillity, CA (2014)

In 1939, Gordon W. Hewes and William C. Massey walked through the fields around Tranquillity as part of the archaeological survey of the central San Joaquin Valley. They came across a small exposed surface where stone tools and other implements were in close proximity to the remains of large mammals like horses, antelopes, elks, bison and camelops. The discovery of Tranquillity stirred a lot of interest around the country because such old sites are very rare, especially in California. North American camels became extinct around 11.000 years ago; Paleolithic hunters accelerated a process that started with the warmer post-glacial weather and the gradual disappearance of the grassland these large animals thrived on.
The climate in this part of the Central Valley is similar to the Mojave desert, low annual rainfall and shrub vegetation with sparse trees along sloughs and swamps. Under the shade of these trees a small group of hunter-gatherers established a small hut perhaps as far back as the early Holocene. Then, for thousands of years, they regularly went back to this corner of the Valley to gather seeds, tubers and grasses, they hunted animals of all sizes though not many birds nor fish. Eventually they built more permanent houses and stayed there for longer periods of time.
Perhaps they didn't kill the camelops and the proximity with the tools is coincidental; an on-going research project is expected to add some clear chronological information. Even if they didn't have to engage those large creatures the people that lived at Tranquillity had their fair share of hard work: fractured ribs, hernias and various forms of arthritis tell a story of abundance that did not come without an effort.
Below are four spear points from the Tranquillity site. The third from the left was fractured by an impact, carried back to the village and discarded in the fire. The reddish coloration is due to the intense heat.

Hearst Museum 1-61917, 1-61918, 1-61919, 1-61920
Points
California, Fresno county, Tranquillity site
Collected by Gordon W. Hewes, 1942

Waste

The Hearst Museum has been closed for over one year now. The cause behind this closure was the opportunity to renovate the exhibit galleries and the Kroeber Hall basement. For the latter to happen safely staff, interns and volunteers have been working to inventory and curate all the objects currently housed in the basement. The bulk of the archaeological collections include the assemblages from Nevada and the Great Basin. Few weeks ago we inventoried the content of few cabinets Robert Heizer used to store his research collections. Among other specimen there were about hundred coprolites, leftovers from his research on dietary patterns among prehistoric Indians. 

Featured today are two of those coprolites, both from animals and collected at Lovelock cave, Nevada. 

Hearst Museum TEMP 2013.
coprolite, coyote (?)
Nevada, Churchill county, Lovelock cave

Dessicated feces are among the best finds archaeologists can hope for. They can provide information about diet, travel, hunting and gathering strategies and the environment. The dry conditions in Nevada provided a great environment for their preservation and the Hearst Museum curates hundreds of them.
Between 1967 and 1969, Heizer and colleagues sampled and analyzed hundreds of coprolites mainly from Nevada with samples from Utah, Kentucky, Peru and Mexico. Some samples were re-hydrated using a solution of trisodium phosphate in glass jars. During disaggregation they suggested to use a screw-cap lid, tight, as the odor was disagreeable. Part of the sample was then sieved and analyzed, the rest was placed back in glass jars for future research. Last week one of the conservators opened one of those jars. I wasn't there but I heard that the smell is still surprisingly vile.

Hearst Museum TEMP 2013.
coprolite, bear (?)
Nevada, Churchill county, Lovelock cave

In his 1970 publication, Heizer complained that too few scientists joined his effort as many samples that were sent around were neither analyzed nor returned. When is possible, the Hearst Museum is contacting the institutions that loaned the specimen to ask if they want them returned but like 40 years ago I do not expect many enthusiastic responses, especially for the liquid leftovers.