Protesters believe an oak grove outside Cal's football stadium, where they have been roosting for the past year, is atop an ancient Ohlone Indian burial ground that should be protected from the university's plans to build an athletic training center.
But the Native Americans probably never buried anyone at the Memorial Stadium oak grove, two archaeologists said last week.
"If there was a village at the stadium, and I don't think there was, I'm confident Berkeley archaeologists will have dealt with it appropriately," Laura Jones, campus archaeologist at Stanford University and an expert on Ohlone, said Friday. "In any case, there's been so much construction there, I wouldn't trust anything I found within 100 feet of that stadium."
It appears that this conclusion is based on work done over the years, especially having to do with the construction of the existing stadium which was written up by. . .Alfred Kroeber (and Robert Lowie) who will be known well by students of Americanist archaeology.
I wonder if any remote sensing or possibly some minor test excavations could be performed first. That might at least provide some hard evidence, though if any burials were widely scattered you'd probably not find them.
I liked this: The Ohlone Indians lived on the banks of Strawberry Creek - and dozens of other Bay Area creeks - for at least 10,000 years. Cultural continuity for 10,000 years!