Rare Indian Burial Ground Quietly Destroyed for Million Dollar Houses

[KamaAina]

http://gizmodo.com/rare-indian-burial-ground-quietly-destroyed-for-million-1567902076

A 4,500-year-old American Indian burial ground—one of the richest and best preserved found in California in the past century—has been paved over for a multimillion dollar housing development in the Bay Area. And archeologists are pissed. ...

For thousands of years, this soon-to-be housing development in Larkspur, California had been a burial site containing some 600 sets of human bones as well as instruments, tools, weapons, bear bones, and an extremely rare ceremonial California condor burial. "In my 40 years as a professional archaeologist, I've never heard of an archaeological site quite like this one," E. Breck Parkman, the senior archaeologist for the California State Parks, told the Chronicle....

But the whole situation is more complicated than archeologists versus developers. The remains have since been reburied according to the wishes of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, the most likely descendants of the area's indigenous people. The tribe was not keen on turning the burial ground into an archeological site. "How would Jewish or Christian people feel if we wanted to dig up skeletal remains in a cemetery and study them? Nobody has that right," a chairman for the tribe said to the Chronicle.

Ultimately, development in Larkspur sits at the uncomfortable intersection of competing interests among developers, archeologists, and American Indians. It's too late to undo the decisions in Larkspur—the 22-acre expanse is well on its way to becoming townhouses, senior housing, and multimillion dollar homes—but is there a solution that could have satisfied everyone?

[olddots]

1. zero population growth is the answer

And I have two daughters and a grandson DUH !!!!!!!!

[KamaAina]

2. No, it's higher-density housing

preferably near transit hubs like Larkspur's ferry landing.

[nykym]

3. There Here!

Poltergeist

[Brother Buzz]

4. That event was reported over a year ago

That Gizmodo link is totally unreadable on my computer so I don't know how much of it is being repeated, but here's a story about it from last year:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024861414

And another story from a local publication also from 2014:


Burial ground discovered, paved over for new development

by Danielle Chemtob on May 1, 2014


As the greenhouses that used to line Doherty Drive have been uprooted to pave way for a suburban development called Rose Lane, archaeological excavations have revealed that the location of the soon-to-be 85-residence community is actually the former site of a much older community—one that, over 4,000 years ago, may have been home to a productive Coastal Miwok village.
The Rose Lane development along Doherty Drive sits atop the former location of a Native American burial ground rich in artifacts.

The Rose Lane development along Doherty Drive sits atop the former location of a Native American burial ground rich in artifacts.

Around 600 Native American human remains, as well a condor burial and a bear burial, obsidian, grinding stones, shell beads, ancient spears-throwers called atlatls that predated the bow and arrow, and other artifacts, the oldest levels of which date to about 4,500 years ago—older than King Tut’s tomb—have been uncovered in a shellmound, or an artificial mound created by humans, underneath the Rose Lane development, according to Jelmer W. Eerkens, a professor of anthropology at UC Davis who visited the site.

The remains and artifacts were analyzed by archaeologists and then reburied in an undisclosed on-site location according to the wishes of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, who were determined to be the most likely descendants of the Coastal Miwok, although no actual DNA testing was allowed to be conducted.

However, Eerkens believes that the archaeologists’ wishes were not honored, and that they were not given enough time to investigate the site, and that because of the rarity of sites as old and large as this one, it is a loss to the archaeological community that further analysis was not done.

<more>

http://redwoodbark.org/2014/05/native-american-burial-ground-discovered-under-local-development-2/