Archeology Students Dig Into the Past : Irvine Site Yields Remains of Ancient Indian Culture

Hank Koerper fingered a triangular, chiseled stone as he stood atop a verdant knoll in the Irvine Hills Saturday, then he dropped the quarter-size chip into a small plastic bag.

“This is debitage,” the bearded Cypress College professor said to a semicircle of students, who nodded knowingly, “the waste flakes from making tools. It’s a good implement to find.”

Scores of prehistoric spearheads, shells, beads made from fish vertebrae and crude tools were discovered Saturday at the site in the San Joaquin foothills, where a group of about 65 students embarked on a weekend of unearthing the remains of an ancient Indian encampment.

Koerper said radiocarbon testing shows that many of the artifacts found at the site date back more than 6,500 years, when a small tribe of Shoshonean Indians migrated inland from their Newport Bay settlement a mile away to harvest seeds and sage in the spring.

“What we’re basically looking at is past people’s trash,” remarked Koerper, who is spearheading the semester-long weekend digs with the help of anthropology instructors from Cal State Long Beach and from Christ College in Irvine, on whose campus the site lies.

Tools in Surface Soil

Koerper said members of the Christ College staff asked him some time ago to examine the area as a dig site. When he found shells and crude scraping tools in surface soil, he knew the site would be rich with evidence of a prehistoric culture.

“They’re not the pyramids . . . this is not King Tut country--no gold and rubies with emerald eyelets--but the soil is rich in lots of things. With fish parts, you can tell the seasons people were here.”

Dressed in jeans and cowboy hats, sun bonnets and baseball caps, the eclectic group of would-be anthropologists--ranging from 18-year-old college freshmen to middle-aged men and women--spent six hours shoveling through six-foot-square “units,” or digging spots.

Students are assigned by fours to a unit for the duration of the semester, and they trade the duties of using flat, diamond-shaped trowels to dig and of sifting through the dirt using a waist-high wood-framed screen.

The discoveries Saturday were great and small. The best of the day, Koerper and others said, were the five otoliths. An otolith, which is flesh-colored and no bigger than a thumbnail, is a fish inner ear that archeologists can use to date a site by counting the rings a fish acquires with age.

Novice Finds Spearpoint

Finding a spearpoint at about noon was the high point of the day for Marcia Buxman, 28, an X-ray technician in San Pedro who was sifting the soil, called midden, for only the second time.

“It was used to kill a body,” she announced to the group, holding up her artifact as everyone broke into laughter, “and we’ll find it in our pit today!”

At another corner of the site, Scott Matz, 24, a graphic artist from Whittier, rolled a bead that a prehistoric Shoshonean had fashioned by punching a pinhead-size hole in a fish vertebrae. “Maybe by the end of the day we’ll have enough for a necklace,” he said, grinning as he used a paintbrush to gently dust away soil from stones arranged in what once may have been a fire pit. Archeology, he said, is strictly a hobby for him. “It gets you outside. It’s just a lot of fun.”

According to Koerper, the most commonly found items at the site have been scrapers and knives--small carved stones that resemble arrowheads--spearpoints, and “an awful lot of milling equipment--equipment used for grinding seeds and pulp.”

The tribe came to the area seasonally, he said, most likely to harvest seeds from the abundant brush. The Shoshoneans hunted birds, geese, deer, rabbit, and sea mammals such as harbor seals and an occasional sea lion, he said.

Evidence of Trading

Volcanic glass, found at the site on earlier digs, indicates that tribe members traded with tribes living as far away as Nevada, as the glass is not native to the area. The Indians used the mineral to make tools and cut leather.

“The best thing we’ve found, if you’re asking about artifacts aesthetically, was a beautifully done medallion or pendant,” Koerper said. “But fish ears can be exciting once you learn what they can tell you about the people that were here.”

Frequently, Koerper said, the group finds evidence of a more recent culture.

“We do find birth control devices from modern times, but if we did find (prehistoric contraceptive devices) we probably wouldn’t recognize them,” Koerper said, chuckling. “We find a lot of beer bottles too.”