Monday, January 29, 2007

Fight! Fight! Saving the story under our feet: What happens when rich archaeological sites stand in the way of progress?
Kick the dirt in just about any prime local spot, and you're likely to be in a place where others lived their lives before you. The soil under our feet has some compelling stories to tell about the "SLO life" of the past 8,000 or 10,000 years.

But unread books and even whole libraries full of these stories are being destroyed all around us, according to some archaeologists and Native American tribes.

"This is just ghastly. It's like throwing books in a bonfire," said archaeologist John Parker, shaking his head as he walked by towering piles of bulldozed earth at a hillside construction project on Rockview Street.


Long article but a bit confusing. Essentially it seems that the original assessment was probably correct: Dunton agrees with Singer's assessment that the Rockview construction site "doesn't contain anything interesting" because it was disturbed years ago, when the U.S. military installed a gun emplacement at the top of the hill during World War II.