Lost Skull Clouds Cathedral Plans

A solitary human skull discovered 40 years ago in a downtown Los Angeles excavation trench is at the heart of a debate about the proposed site of a new Roman Catholic cathedral.

However, no one seems to know the whereabouts of this bone of contention. The search is continuing for the cranium, which apparently came from the skeleton of a California Indian who lived possibly more than 1,000 years ago.

“It is somewhere between anger and heartbreaking that this thing is missing, that this skull disappeared and nobody knows where it is,” said Sharon Cotrell, a researcher for the Gabrieleno/Tongva Tribal Council.

The Native American group believes the skull may be evidence of an ancient cemetery beneath what is now parking lot pavement at Hill and Temple streets, where work on the new cathedral is expected to begin in the spring. Their protests have led to city-imposed requirements for more archeological exploration than was originally planned on that hillside near the Hollywood Freeway. If historically significant items are found, the cathedral project could face lengthy delays or need a revised design.

On the other hand, some prominent archeologists, including the only one known to have examined the skull, think it was accidentally moved to that property in the early 1950s in landfill that was used to close off an old trolley tunnel and that it is unlikely any ancient graveyard will be uncovered.

If the skull is found, both sides want it examined using some of the scientific methods that were unavailable back in 1957. They hope to discover clues about its history, and perhaps about the land. Then, they agree, it should be buried with dignity and dispatch.

All that recently created a sticky political situation for the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, which reviewed the environmental impact report for the planned $50-million Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

The CRA was under intense pressure from City Hall and the archdiocese to speed the cathedral project along, to meet Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s target dedication date of September 2000. Church officials say that critical time had already been consumed by legal battles between the archdiocese and the preservationists who stopped demolition of the current St. Vibiana’s cathedral, a few blocks away. Yet the CRA did not want to appear indifferent to a minority group or trigger a lawsuit from Native Americans.

So far, efforts have been unsuccessful to locate the skull at the most likely storage spots: the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, the Los Angeles Police Department, UCLA, the Southwest Museum or the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

“It certainly is a loose end, a major loose end,” said archeologist Brian D. Dillon, who tried to locate the cranium recently while studying the site for the cathedral’s environmental impact report. Mahony has appointed Dillon archeologist for the project.

Under the CRA requirement, a Native American will monitor any digs as well. But the choice of a monitor may be difficult because local tribal communities are splintered.

Father Gregory Coiro, the archdiocese spokesman, said that the church will seek to address both the Native Americans’ concerns and the cardinal’s desire to have the cathedral completed in three years. “The two words we will have to be aware of are ‘expeditious’ and ‘sensitive,’ ” he said.

Since Native American remains were treated with less care in the 1950s than today, there is a strong chance that the skull was simply thrown out a long time ago, Dillon said. But he hopes that is not the case. “It may still be out there. Nothing is impossible,” said Dillon. “I don’t think it’s a lost cause.”

While he would like to see the skull, Dillon does not think it represents the tip of any archeological iceberg. The future cathedral’s site has been altered so many times in the past century that any significant artifacts--if they ever existed--probably were destroyed long ago, he said. In addition to the digging and filling of the old trolley tunnel, work on the property has included trimming the ridgeline by as much as 30 feet, he said.

Much of the information about the skull has come from Charles Rozaire, the curator emeritus of anthropology at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Rozaire, 69, was an archeologist at the Southwest Museum on Feb. 22, 1957, when he received an emergency call from the coroner. Could he come downtown to examine a skull that a work crew found in a trench they were digging for air conditioning vents? The skull might have been evidence of a recent murder.

In an interview last week at the parking lot that now covers the trench, Rozaire recalled how he had descended into the 11-foot-deep pit and quickly realized that there had been no recent homicide. He did not take the skull with him to a laboratory, but left it in the care of the coroner at the scene.

“I just assumed he would have taken it,” said Rozaire, who did not think much of the skull for the last 40 years.

In fact, he seems surprised to be thrust into the current debate and chagrined that his 1957 report has, he said, been distorted and exaggerated to suggest that something more extensive was found.

Since no other bones of the skeleton were discovered, Rozaire was unable to determine its sex and could say only that the time of death was mid-adulthood. The skull’s front teeth were shaped in a manner unique to Native Americans and Asians and the molars were ground down in a way consistent with the diet of local tribes before the Spanish took over Southern California in the late 18th century, he said.

No artifacts were in the soil, nor was there any evidence that there once was a cemetery or village there, he recalled. And the soil seemed loosely packed, appearing to be fill from another location.

So Rozaire thinks it is unlikely that future excavations at the cathedral site will find anything of archeological importance. “But surprising things have happened in the past,” he added, referring to other digs.

Archeologist Clay Singer, who is helping the Gabrielenos, disagrees with Rozaire and Dillon on whether the skull was moved with landfill soil to the site where it was discovered. Singer, who has never seen the skull, suggested that such a move would have left the bone in a more damaged condition than described by Rozaire.

Wherever the bone came from, its fate since 1957 “is another example of the mistreatment of the remains of the Indians’ ancestors,” Singer said. He suspects the skull was taken home by one of the construction workers or by a coroner’s office employee.

Coroner spokesman Scott Carrier said he had never heard of the skull and that it would be very difficult to track it down. Carrier said a veteran coroner’s employee told him that Native American bones were usually given to tribal authorities in the ‘50s. Other coroner’s employees, however, said the skull probably was thrown out or kept as a medical teaching specimen.

Nowadays, such bones are supposed to be transferred to the state Native American Heritage Commission, which was founded in 1977. Nationwide, complaints about disrespectful treatment of Native American skeletons and their displays in museums led Congress in 1990 to pass a law that allows tribes to reclaim such bones and rebury them. Tribal leaders also are much more reluctant to allow modern carbon-dating tests, which destroy a portion of the bones.

Anthony Morales, who is chairman of the Gabrieleno/Tongva tribal council, said his group would have to decide whether to allow carbon testing or some less intrusive examinations if the skull is ever found. Right now, he said, it is more important for someone to locate it.

Even if carbon dating is forbidden, the skull might be weighed, X-rayed and more precisely measured for clues to its history, age and sex, Dillon said. Any such results would not alter or halt plans for the cathedral, he said. “But as an historical aside it would be very interesting.”