U. C. Pair Probe Indian Shellmound Mystery - Oakland Tribune, 16 May 1957

 

Tribune photo ARCHEOLOGISTS_James Bennyhoff (left) and Albert B. Elsasser, University of California archeologists, excavate at the south eastern edge of the Emeryville Indian shellmound. They hit an underground stream four feet down.

U.C. Pair Probe Indian Shellmound Mystery

University of California archaeologists have dug down into the very bedrock of human existence in the Bay Area in an attempt to fix the precise date of the origin of Emeryville's famed Indian shellmound. 

The digging was pretty muddy for Albert B. Elsasser and James Bennyhoff of the University's Archaeological Survey, who ran into an underground stream four feet down at the shellmound site.

Elsasser estimates that the "dig" was located at the southeastern edge of the once 24-foot-high shellmound.

The objective was to sink a trench to the "sterile" clay upon which the ancient mound rested. At this point the two archeologists found signs of human existence and recovered samples of charred wood and bone.

With these materials, the famous carbon-14 tests for dating will be made.

The two researchers found ample quantities of carbon from fires believed to have been built by Indians who lived on the banks of Temescal Creek and San Francisco Bay more than 3,000 years ago.

U.C. Pair Probe Indian Shellmount Mystery shellmound 16 May 1957, Thu Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) Newspapers.com