Excavation Gets Some Digs

* People were living at the edge of Newport’s Upper Bay 9,500 years ago? That’s 7,500 BC--three thousand years before the first pharaohs of Egypt, four thousand years before the Sumerians invented writing.

And now their burial sites have been bulldozed to make way for upscale condos?

Perhaps the most astonishing thing about your Nov. 2 article is the quote from Larry Thomas of the Irvine Co.: “If people thought [the site] was so significant archeologically that it should have been untouched, there was an opportunity to purchase it from us.”

But at the time of the vote to preserve open space around the Upper Bay no one in Newport knew of the ancient burial site. The Irvine Co. kept its secret very well. Did the city know? That will be interesting to discover. Did The Times know? Apparently not. Did the state know that the most important prehistoric site in California was about to be destroyed? There are funds available for the purchase of such sites. Certainly the voters of Newport Beach didn’t know.

Another curious quote in your article is that of an unnamed “archeological worker”: “We kept walking around, saying, ‘Where is the Smithsonian? Where is National Geographic?’ . . . I guess money talks.” Apparently it does. Irvine Co. money seems to have bought the silence of this “archeological worker” who never bothered to call The Times or anyone who might have tried to stop the rape of this priceless part of mankind’s heritage. And how clever to use prison inmates to do the digging. Real archeologists might have talked.

Back in the 1950s I spent two years working in salvage archeology. I know the difference between the rush of salvage digging to meet a developer’s deadline and the careful excavation that this site deserved. We dug from Redondo Beach to Arcadia without finding a single ancient burial. To learn that 600 burials were opened and, without even being dated, were dumped into a trench is beyond comprehension.

LEE PAYNE

Newport Beach

* After rereading your lengthy coverage of the archeological dig on the bluff above Newport Harbor, it seems to me that the process works.

A well-regarded professional archeologist conducted a thorough excavation of the developed portion of the site, and will make public his findings and conclusions.

The Native American community will learn more about its heritage, and will have access to hundreds of artifacts that should shed light on life here as much as 9,500 years ago. And the remains of its ancestors have been reinterred according to tribal wishes, and not subjected to carbon dating that they find offensive.

And a new generation of people drawn to the beauty of the bluff above Newport Harbor is enjoying shelter in the same place that was home to the original settlers of this area.

It appears that the extensive and costly mitigation requirements of the city of Newport Beach and the Coastal Commission were carried out thoroughly and sensitively by the landowner and its archeologist.

CHRISTINE DIEMER

Executive director,

Orange County chapter

Building Industry Assn.

of Southern California

* Thank you for the comprehensive article regarding the archeological site ORA 64.

It’s regrettable that such an important anthropological resource was obliterated just to build another gated community. The only reason that the site was so easily destroyed is that no one challenged the project’s approval under the California Environmental Quality Act. CEQA only works if people enforce it.

The Hellman Ranch development recently approved in Seal Beach would destroy 10 archeological sites and an extensive burial ground believed to date from the same time period, 4,000 to 8,000 years ago.

Infrared photographs of the project site have revealed what appear to be the foundations of ancient dome houses and temples. A golf course, strip mall and 70 homes would replace this invaluable record of human history.

It’s time for concerned citizens to challenge the laws that have led to such shortsighted destruction.

MOIRA HAHN

Seal Beach