Crew uncovers ancient site under Channel Islands home

Cheri Carlson | Ventura

Show Caption Hide Caption Ancient artifacts unearthed on Santa Rosa Island As the National Park Service prepared to rehabilitate an historic ranch house on Santa Rosa Island, archaeologists discovered tool artifacts dating between 8,000 and 16,000 years old beneath the structure.

A crew tunneling under a historic ranch house on Santa Rosa Island has uncovered a site that could help experts piece together what life was like there more than 8,000 years ago.

On the island 40 miles off Ventura, archaeologists discovered stone tools characteristic of sites occupied 8,000 to 13,000 years ago.

The 150-year-old home, part of the historic Vail and Vickers ranch, turned out to be sitting on top of the significant archaeological site.

“At this point, we’ve determined that there are intact paleocoastal deposits from the south end of the house to the opposite end on the north,” said Gary Brown, National Park Service archaeologist.

He and a team of scientists worked over the past week, methodically digging in small test areas and sifting through each bucketful of dirt and stone at the site, part of the Channel Islands National Park.

Two significant discoveries came just days apart as a team got to work around and under the house.

First, they found a distinctive stone called a Channel Islands barbed point; then later, they discovered a crescent. Both likely would have been used to hunt and fish, and are signatures of a sophisticated technology of early toolmaking on the islands.

“Usually, when we find the two of them together, the site is at least 10,000 years old and could be 12,000 years old or older,” said Jon Erlandson, University of Oregon archaeologist and an expert in the field.

“This became a very exciting and very important discovery,” he said.

The Chumash people and their ancestors have been on the islands for thousands of years, Erlandson said.

Arlington Man, the earliest known human remains in North America, date back 13,000 years and were found on Santa Rosa Island.

"That suggests that these were some of the very earliest peoples along the Pacific Coast,” he said. “We know now that they were on the islands as early as they were practically anywhere in the new world.”

“The Channel Islands, especially the northern islands, are emerging as one of the central places in understanding the peopling of the new world,” he said.

A sophisticated technology

On Sunday, scientists worked, slowly excavating three holes on different sides of the house.

Nicole Kulaga, of the National Park Service, had perhaps the most cramped quarters, as she worked underneath the home, now propped up about a foot off the ground.

They each prodded the dirt with small trowels or straw brushes working in one small section at a time.

Nearby, other members of the team poured the buckets of dirt into screens — first a quarter-inch screen to try to find pieces of stone tools.

Then, water was sprayed on the rest of the material in screens with even smaller holes to try to find bits of shell, bone or other pieces.

With the initial dry screening, the team hopes to find tools and projectile points that might still have clues about the prey being hunted back then.

Even after thousands of years, Brown said, scientists can find microscopic traces of protein and identify specific species of animal.

Any organic material found also can be dated, which could help confirm when people were there.

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Still a lot to learn

For more than 150 years, families operated a sheep and cattle ranch on the property just off Bechers Bay. The wood-frame house was built sometime around 1869.

Plans called for rehabbing the house, which could then be used for visitor lodging.

That means trying to keep as much of the original building intact as possible, while bringing it up to current standards, said Laura Kirn, chief of cultural resources for Channel Islands National Park.

One challenge: The house didn’t have a foundation.

So the crew lifted it up on beams to add one.

The park service had surveyed the area before the work and didn’t find any archaeological resources but decided to keep someone on site to monitor the work.

Within a few days of tunneling around the house, the archaeological monitor had found stone flakes, the kind used to make tools thousands of years ago.

Work stopped, and park officials came up with a new plan to investigate the archaeology.

“This is part of our cultural heritage here,” said Chumash elder and island descendant Julie Tumamait-Stenslie.

Tumamait-Stenslie, who gave a blessing at the site, was one of a few Chumash representatives there Sunday.

Most of the dirt and even some of the less significant artifacts will be reburied on the island that's called Wima in the Chumash language. But some of the more significant pieces could be studied, she said.

Those, she said, could let “our children’s children’s children see, appreciate and admire and know how brilliant our people are,” she said.

The team likely will finish excavating the site midweek, said park Superintendent Russell Galipeau.

After that work wraps up, park officials will analyze the data working with experts and consulting with the Chumash representatives to decide how to move forward.

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Plans might include changing the design for the foundation to come up with something that would be less disruptive to the site, he said.

At the same time, experts will continue to study the findings, trying to fill in more of the story of the islands and the people who lived there more than 10,000 years ago.

“I think until just a few years ago, it would have been unusual to find a 10,000-year-old site out here. There were a handful of them at best,” Erlandson said.

But after a concerted effort to learn more about the paleocoastal sites, they have started to fill in more of the story.

He hopes this site will further that work.

“We’ve learned a lot in the last 10 or 20 years,” he said. “We still have a tremendous amount to learn.”

If you go

Officials encouraged visitors to see and experience archaeological resources found in national parks but they also must leave everything in place and undisturbed.

Collecting, possessing, destroying, injuring, defacing, or disturbing the resources is prohibited by federal law and agency regulations.

June 6, 2017: This story has been updated to add information about penalties for removing archaeological resources from a national park, and the Chumash name for the island.