The Fastest Slow Guy You Know: Shell Mound Traces Indians For 1000 Years

Thursday, May 5, 2022

Shell Mound Traces Indians For 1000 Years - Oakland Tribune, 02 Dec 1926

Shell Mound Traces Indians For 1000 Years

BERKELEY, Dec. 2. - When the Danes were making their last desperate attempt to capture the British Isles in the tenth century, tribes of Indians were camping in Emeryville, living on shellfish, sea and land animals that abounded there, and scattering bones and shells along the bay shore on what is now Shellmound park.

Comparative dates on the building up of the Indian mounds in the park, which were unearthed and explored two years ago by University of California scientists, were made possible by research conducted by W. Egbert Schenck, honorary assistant curator of the anthropology museum at the university, the results of which were published in his "Final Reports on Emeryville Shellmound," released today.

The author estimates, on the amount of material in the mound, totalling about 6,000,000 cubic feet of shell, ashes, bones, and camp dirt, that the Indians were 1000 years in accumulating the debris. Schenck estimates that the shore line extended about 1500 feet further out into the bay than at present.

"The waters of the bay were inhabited by many sea otters now extinct and even occasional whales," says Schenck. "Salmon and other varieties of fish spawned in Temescal creek, and the shore of the bay was lined with oysters, clams, mussels, and other shellfish.

This food paradise, visited regularly by the Indians for 1000 years before the coming of the white man, gradually became a mass of debris through the "leavings" of the untidy natives, who pitched shells, animal bones, and even the remains of an occasional human body upon the growing mound, Sebenck says. This mass of debris spread over an area of 300,000 square feet, and reached a height of about 40 feet. In the last 25 years 651 skeletons have been recovered from the mound.

From the PDF THE EMERYVILLE SHELLMOUND - FINAL REPORT, BY W. EGBERT SCHENCK, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 1926, page 12:

Fig. 1. Main geographical features of the Emeryville shellmound. "A" is the western cone dealt with as "the mound." (Based on U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey of 1859.)
Full-size, zoomable version here. This shows 1859 drawing + 2022 map.

Here is the same georeferenced map, along with the 1888 Britton & Rey Map of the City of Oakland and Surroundings. I used the 1888 map to reference the original coast line, which has been extended significantly in all areas by landfill. Look at the difference between the old coast line and the current one.

Here is a close-up of the 1859 + 2022 maps:

The "thicket" is now where Ikea is, and it also extends into what's now the "Bay Street" shopping area. The principal mound - I guess there were two? - is squarely in the shopping area. It's interesting that the first humans created a sacred place for consumption in the thousands of years they were here. We showed up, destroyed their sacred place, then created our own sacred place for consumption. Instead of shellfish and beaver, it's products from shipping containers and fast food.

TOPOGRAPHY OF THE MOUND

When Uhle abandoned the mound in 1902 it was surmounted by a pavilion surrounded by a cypress hedge. By 1924 both of these had been destroyed. The cut by the Northern Railroad (now Southern Pacific Company) had destroyed the natural contours on the east. On the north a factory and a tank had been erected. This work had disclosed burials but had obliterated the northern projection of the mound (fig.2). On the west between the mound and the bay a concrete road had been built. A portion of the mound had been used for the purpose and this further confused the contours. Even with these disfigurements the mound presented itself as a fairly symmetrical truncated cone with steeply sloping sides (pl. 36).