History of Department's Archaeology (1950-1999)

1950-1959

The anthropology program began at California State University, Sacramento (formerly Sacramento State College) in 1950. Dr. Richard H. Reeve was the first individual hired into what was a joint Anthropology, Sociology, and Geography Department. Dr. Reeve had taught English at Sacramento Junior College since the 1930s and had participated in the archaeology program at that institution, which was active from 1933 until the death of Dr. Jeremiah Lillard in 1940. Sociology became a separate department in 1952 and Geography left Anthropology in 1957. The first archaeology field class was held in 1950 at the McCants site (CA-YOL-15) in Capay Valley. Dr. Reeve directed the excavations and Clifford Curtice was the field assistant. The excavations were reported in the Hornet newspaper and it was noted that several human skeletons had been discovered. Professor Reeve was chair of the Anthropology department until his retirement in 1966. He believed that the publicity surrounding archaeological fieldwork was good for the department and throughout his tenure as chair the excavations were often described in the Sacramento Bee and Union and the college newspaper. During his association with the Junior College archaeology program Dr. Reeve had visited many mounds and met numerous landowners in Sacramento County. The sites chosen for excavation were often ones that the Junior College had already tested in the 1930s and in some cases, such as the Windmiller Site, the University of California under the guidance of Robert F. Heizer had also dug at in the late 1940s.

Most of the initial archaeological fieldwork by Sacramento State College occurred because a site was being levelled and human skeletons had been discovered. In many cases staff and students from the college visited a site, dug a few units, removed a few interments and then went on to another project. It appears that this was the procedure at the Woodard Site (CA-SAC-200), Windmiller (CA-SAC-107, Bartholomew (CA-SAC-117, originally Woodard #3), Mathena (CA-SAC-203), and Five Mile Slough (CA-SJO-105) which were test excavated in the early 1950s under the direction of Dr. Reeve. At other times sites which had been disturbed were visited and miscellaneous artifacts and human bone would be collected. No site reports or other analysis was ever published as a result of this research. {top of page}

A different type of activity was reported in the December 3, 1952 Sacramento Bee and in the Hornet Newspapers of December 5th and December 12, 1952. Beginning on November 6, 1952 Dr. Reeve and J. Harold Severaid of the Biological Sciences Department supervised several students in the removal of a partial well preserved mastodon skeleton at Live Oak, California. Much of the skull, tusks, mandible, teeth and portions of other bones were present. The students learned how to expose and plaster jacket fossil material. Clifford Curtice was also involved in this investigation. Most of the recovered fossil material was given to the Paleontology Department at UCB, while the Department of Anthropology at SSC kept a portion of a long bone for its comparative faunal collection. Periodically the "Live Oak" mastodon fossil would reappear as collections were moved from one location to another. It is now a fixture in the teaching laboratory in Mendocino Hall.

In 1955 and 1956 one of the largest sites in the vicinity of Sacramento was partially destroyed during the construction of a subdivision in South Sacramento. The King Brown site (CA-SAC-29) was the largest excavation which occurred under the supervision of Dr. Reeve. Clifford Curtice directed investigations at the site during the summer of 1956 as it was being levelled. The excavations at this site reached a depth of over 13 feet and cultural materials spanning the time period from at least 2500 to 3000 years to the historic were recovered. During the excavations conducted during the academic year portions of 141 human skeletons were removed, cleaned and a large number of measurements of crania were made. During partial levelling of the site in 1956 additional graves were assigned and numbered beginning with 200 since no one could remember which was the last number previously used. Philip Hawkes (1968) wrote his masters thesis on the human osteology from this site. Also included were 24 skeletons recovered during excavations by the California Department of Parks and Recreation under the direction of William Pritchard in 1967. These latter interments were numbered 301-324 since no one knew which number was the last assigned in the 200 series. William Olsen described the artifacts from the 1955-1956 excavations for his masters thesis (1963).

In the middle 1950s the archaeological activities of the department changed dramatically. A contract from the National Park Service was accepted by the college to conduct an excavation program in the area to be inundated by Monticello Dam at what is now Lake Berryessa in Napa County. For a period of two years much of the archaeological work was concentrated in the Fall of 1956 and the Spring and Fall semesters of 1957 at sites CA-NAP-59, CA-NAP-60, CA-NAP-89, and CA-NAP-98 (Arnold and Reeve 1959) . This work was under the field direction of Dr. Brigham Arnold, . Students, who worked on this project and later received masters degrees in social science from the Department of Anthropology, included Charles Gebhardt and Norman Wilson (field and laboratory assistants) and Clifford Curtice excavation participant. Douglas Scovill, who later became the chief anthropologist for the National Park Service, was also a participant in this fieldwork. Dr. Reeve was not active in archaeological fieldwork after the Monticello Reservoir project was completed.

Dr. Arnold directed excavations at the Scott site in eastern Sacramento County in 1957 and at the Garden Valley Site in El Dorado County in 1958 with the assistance of graduate student Charles Gebhardt. During the summers of 1957 and 1958 Professor Arnold conducted surveys and excavations at several locations on federal lands in the Martis Valley in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the National Park Service (Arnold 1957, 1958). The major excavation that resulted from this work was at CA-PLA-272 (formerly SP-6). An analysis of the biface industry from this site was prepared as a masters thesis at CSUS by Daryl Noble in 1983. Dr. Arnold also directed excavations at Sutter's Fort in 1958 as part of the California Department of Parks and Recreations reconstruction activities. Participating in the Martis Valley research were Norman Wilson while William Olsen, Louis (Sammy) Payen, and Chuck Gebhardt worked at Sutters Fort. The Latter wrote his thesis in Social Science at Sacramento State College (1959) on Sutters Fort and Louis Payen and William Olsen continued to work there in 1959 and 1960 (Payen 1959; Olsen 1960). Professor Arnold became a full time professor in Geography at Sacramento State College and directed no archaeological work for the Department of Anthropology after 1958. Dr. Arnold did direct a survey along the Pacific Gas and Electric companies Canadian Gas Line alignment through the Central California Archaeological Foundation (CCAF) in 1961, he submitted a report in 1964, and the collections are curated in the Department of Anthropology at CSUS. This was the last archaeological work completed by Professor Arnold, who expressed the opinion that unless you could bring the entire site into the laboratory and spend years studying it the archaeologist was destroying more information than they were collecting.  {top of page}

The archaeological program under went a major change in 1958 when the Department of Anthropology hired its first fulltime prehistoric archaeologist. James Bennyhoff, who was completing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley applied for the position along with William Jean Beeson, who was completing his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona. Had an archaeologist trained in California and interested in the local prehistory been hired rather than a Southwestern Trained individual who never developed an interest in the region the program might have gone in a different direction. As it was, Professor Beeson directed the fieldwork program from the fall of 1958 until January 1969. During that period of time a large number of individuals were trained who went on to become prominent archaeologists in California and elsewhere. Sites and programs conducted under the supervision of Dr. Beeson were numerous and were most often under the direction of a large cadre of graduate students who passed through the program. No archaeological contract work was undertaken through the University while Professor Beeson was in charge of the fieldwork program.

The first excavations under the direction of Professor Beeson was at the Mosher Site (CA-SAC-56). This site was a large mound which had been tested by the Sacramento Junior College in the 1930s and had yielded a complete clay vessel (Johnson 1990:145-158; Kuelusiak 1982). The site was chosen for excavation by Francis Riddell, State Parks Archaeologist, partly because it was known and partly because it had recently been partially levelled and human skeletal material was lying around on the surface and in adjacent fields. Over the years several students prepared papers on various aspects of the excavations at this site but no publications resulted from their work.

Professor Beeson had recently completed a survey of a large geographic region in the Saint Johns region of Arizona for his Ph.D. fieldwork and he had collected pottery from the surface of the 524 sites that he recorded (Beeson 1966). While preparing his dissertation over the next eight years students in the department had the opportunity to learn about pottery analysis and distribution studies based on a large collection of typable sherds. Dr. Beeson also took travel study groups to the Flagstaff and four corners areas of Arizona during easter week each year. He also acquired for the department a type collection of southwestern pottery, an excellent Kachina Doll collection, and some excellent examples of Navajo rugs and weaving paraphernalia.

Several individuals interested in archaeological research got together in Sacramento and Davis and decided to form the Central California Archeological Foundation (CCAF). Neither Dr. Martin Baumhoff at the University of California, Davis Department of Anthropology, Professor Beeson, or local community college instructors wished to conduct contract archaeological work through their institutions. It was one of the goals of the founders of the CCAF that it would accept and administer contracts as a not for Profit Scientific Educational Foundation. It was agreed that any reports prepared concerning CCAF activities would be filed in the libraries at UCD and CSUS and that any collections would be curated at the latter institution if it was not turned over to the agency contracting for the work. Dr. Beeson remained an active member of this organization until 1971, when he resigned because of disagreements over how contracts were awarded within the Foundation. From 1961 until 1971 students from CSUS actively participated in survey and excavation contracts awarded to the CCAF. Professors Theodoratus and Johnson, from the Department of Anthropology, were also members of the CCAF and resigned along with several other individuals at the same time that Dr. Beeson departed and this ended the relationship between the Department of Anthropology and the CCAF.

From 1959 through 1961 students from Sacramento State conducted surveys in Amador, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties under the supervision of Professor Beeson. This resulted in the location of several new prehistoric sites and the rerecording of numerous previously known cultural resources. Also at this time an agreement was reached with Dr. Robert Heizer at the Archaeological Research Facility at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) for a student from SSC to make typewritten copies of the site records for the counties in Central California. Included in this agreement was the understanding that any new records filled out by the college would be filed with the Archaeological Research Facility at UCB where they would be assigned official trinomial numbers. 

1960-1969 {top of page}

Surveys of considerable magnitude occurred in Placer County on the Foresthill Divide, along the lower Bear River in and near Camp Farwest Reservoir and in eastern Sacramento County. Extensive surveys were also conducted along the Sacramento River with a concentration in Yolo County in and near the community of West Sacramento. Of particular interest was the partial survey of a portion of the Mokelumne River drainage in Amador County which resulted in test excavations in 1960 by a summer field school at Bamert Cave (CA-AMA-3, Mabry and Theodoratus 1961), Coyote Cave (CA-AMA-4; also see photo 15) , Spring Cave (CA-AMA-5) and the Goins Site (CA-AMA-70). One of the field assistants during this fieldwork was Dorothea Theodoratus, who later became a fulltime professor in the department of Anthropology at SSC in 1967 after completing her Ph.D. work at Syracuse University. The location of the above sites was later to become known as the Camanche Reservoir Locality (Johnson 1967; Palumbo 1967). Dr. Beeson was aware of this locality because of earlier work done by students Louis Payen and David Boloyan in 1957 and 1958.

While the various surveys were in progress Dr. Beeson was also exposed to the fieldwork of James Bennyhoff, who was locating and evaluating sites throughout Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Yolo counties in regard to his Ph.D. fieldwork on the Late Horizon prehistory of Central California. This later was redefined and presented as the Ethnogeography of the Plains Miwok (1961, 1977). One of the issues Bennyhoff was working on was the boundary location between the Nisenan Maidu and the Plains Miwok. This was known to run somewhere between the Cosumnes and American River drainages in Sacramento and El Dorado counties. Professor Beeson decided that the best way to approach this problem was the location and excavation of sites that were far enough from the boundary that they could be identified specifically as Miwok or Maidu and then gradually investigate sites closer and closer to the area in dispute until sites right at the boundary were tested. The work in the Camanche Reservoir locality was the beginning of this research project and was in an area occupied by the Miwok.

With the help of Dr. Louis J. Payen, DVM, who was a major landowner in eastern Sacramento County, and Louis A. Payen, his son who had located and recorded several petroglpyh and other sites (Payen 1959), access was gained to several thousand acres of ranch lands in eastern Sacramento County through the Payen Ranch. Permission was obtained to survey along a portion of Deer Creek and excavations were begun at CA-SAC-225 ([also see photo 9, photo 10, and photo 11] McGowan 1990; Grantham 1993). This research continued, with occasional breaks until January 1969. One lesson Professor Beeson was to learn very quickly was that you do not smoke in waist high dry grass in the summer in Central California. He began to light a cigarette and was immediately verbally assaulted from several individuals. The only fire which occurred over the life of the excavations at CA-SAC-225 occurred one summer during preparation for a field school. An inadequate six inch firebreak was cleared around the site and then the grass on the site inside the encircled area was torched. It quickly got out of hand and jumped the fire break and burned about 20 acres of grass before it was brought under control. Several students later indicated that during the height of the fire Professor Beeson appeared to blackout and was totally unaware of what was going on around him. This might have been an early indication of what later turned out to be a severe problem with his heart. Dr. Beeson paid the rancher for the cattle feed which was burned up in the fire. Student assistants during the work at CA-SAC-225 were Dorothea Theodoratus, Jay Crain, Mark Grady, William Pritchard, and John Beck. Gerald Heine took many photographs when he was a student in the class and Ric Windmiller, through his family, provided and flew an airplane during which aerial photographs were taken.

Two Technical Assistants in the Department of Anthropology at SSC accepted a subcontract from the CCAF in 1961 to conduct an archaeological survey of Millerton Lake State Park on the San Joaquin River in Fresno and Madera counties. These individuals, Dorothea Theodoratus and Jay Crain, prepared a report titled "Reconnaissance Survey of Millerton Lake State Park" and it was submitted to The California State Department of Parks and Recreation in March 1962. This report was well done by the standards of the time and was more complete than many of the manuscripts completed by other archaeologists and students working in Central California. As much as Dr. Crain, currently a Professor of Anthropology at CSUS, professes to his students a dislike of archaeology and suggests that it does not belong in the discipline of Anthropology, it is evident that some of his early training was within that subdiscipline. {top of page}

During the Fall of 1962 fieldwork was supposed to continue at CA-SAC-225 and the students in the class visited the site as part of the first Saturdays orientation. During the following week the Central California Archaeological Foundation met and discussed the fact that the Camanche Reservoir was apparently going to be built by the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) without an adequate archaeological survey. In 1961 Heizer had been approached by EBMUD in regard to the possibility of a survey and what it might cost. They thought that Heizer and UCB would be a good contact, since he and Adan Treganza and Salem Rice (Geology Student, who found some rockshelters) had visited the area, recorded some sites, and test excavated Bamert Cave in the late 1950s and were thus knowledgeable about the prehistory of that part of California. EBMUD staff were told that the survey and any mitigation work could be done for $100.00 (William J. Lange, Personal Communication 1966). This did not seem like an adequate amount to engineers who were used to spending millions of dollars so they contacted the CCAF and asked them to prepare a cost proposal for a complete archaeological survey of the project. Their estimate of over $14,000.00 was considered to high. A third alternative was sought at Stanford University.

Professor Bert Gerow of the Anthropology Department had a graduate student who was looking for a thesis topic and a proposal in the amount of $1600.00 was submitted to EBMUD, who immediately accepted it as a reasonable alternative. George Fisher, from Stanford, spent part of the summer of 1962 at the Camanche Reservoir locality and test excavated one village site at China Gulch (CA-AMA-23), a historic Native American Cemetery across the Mokelumne River (CA-CAL-228), two rockshelters near CA-AMA-23, CA-AMA-45 and CA-AMA-49 and he cleared the bench containing bedrock mortars in Canal Cave (CA-CAL-198). The excavations consisted of only a few units and a draft of the thesis was ultimately submitted to Professor Gerow who recommended major revisions were necessary before it would be acceptable. The required changes were not made and the thesis was never completed (Fisher 1966). The members of CCAF felt that the cultural resources at Camanche would be destroyed unless something was done. William Beeson agreed to have the field class from SSC work in the area until it was no longer feasible.

The first site investigated in the Fall of 1962 was the rockshelter 1855 Cave (CA-AMA-50; Johnson 1967:72-85). The shallow deposit in this shelter was mostly removed in two Saturdays with additional soil samples collected in May 1963. The field class moved to Camanche Creek Cave (CA-CAL-185) and work at this site continued on Saturdays until January 1963 when a crew of five volunteers lived at the site for a week to finish the excavations (Johnson 1967:89-111). Six units were excavated at Harpoon Cave (CA-AMA-8) and two areas were tested in Hole in the Rock Cave (CA-CAL-194; Johnson 1967 45-54, 111-117). The work at CA-AMA-50 was supervised by Jay Crain, that at CA-CAL-185 by Jerald Johnson and Louis Payen, and at CA-AMA-8 and CA-CAL-194 by Jerald Johnson. In the Spring of 1963 the investigation of Canal Cave (CA-CAL-198), Big Cave (CA-AMA-49), China Gulch Site (CA-AMA-23), Hagar Site (CA-CAL-217) and the Old Bridge Site (CA-CAL-237) were started (Johnson 1967:117-124, 61-72, 134, 175-184, 185-282; Palumbo 1967). The Canal, Big Cave and Hagar site excavations were under the direction of Jerald Johnson, Patti Palumbo supervised the work at China Gulch, and Jerald Johnson, Louis Payen and Douglas Simeroth initiated the work at the Old Bridge Site in February. The extensive work at CA-CAL-237 extended through the Spring of 1964 and included considerable work by volunteers under the direction of Jerald Johnson in the summers of 1963 and 1964. The CCAF provided $400.00 in funds to pay for gasoline used by the volunteers while working on the Camanche Reservoir project and Donald Jewell, a member of the foundation and Anthropology Instructor at American River College, encouraged students from his classes to work as volunteers at CA-CAL-237 and CA-AMA-23 in the summer of 1963 (Johnson 1967). The work at CA-AMA-23 continued until the site was virtually destroyed by a group of Boy Scouts on an outing during the Thanksgiving holiday in 1963 (Palumbo 1967). Patti Palumbo also supervised the testing of CA-AMA-45, a rockshelter above and to the west of China Gulch, in the spring of 1964 (Johnson 1967:54-60). After the Camanche Reservoir filled during the December 1964 floods it was drained to repair a leak along one of the coffer dams. In 1965 the Old Bridge Site was revisited and Burial 63, which had been partially eroded away, was removed and became the last addition to the collection from this site.

During this time Jerald Johnson was hired as a part time technical assistant in February 1963 and became the first fulltime person in this position in June 1963. The responsibilities of this position were primarily to keep the archaeology laboratory open 32 hours each week and assist Professor Beeson with the fieldwork on Saturdays. Other departmental responsibilities also existed, such as typing up orders for supplies, showing movies, monitoring classes during tests, cleaning the laboratory and occasionally giving demonstrations and lectures to students. Johnson was employed in this position throughout the duration of the Camanche Reservoir Project, which ultimately became his thesis topic (1966), until he began a Ph.D. program in Anthropology at the University of California at Davis in the Fall of 1965.  {top of page}

In the meantime some work had continued on an occasional basis at CA-SAC-225. Patti Palumbo was looking for a project for a thesis in the spring of 1964. She, Dr. Beeson and the Saturday field class visited CA-SAC-157 on the lower American River in Rancho Cordova. It had been reported that several burials had been discovered when an irrigation pipe was installed in a new almond orchard. After meeting with the owner and discussing the possibility of test excavations, permission was denied. Ms. Palumbo heard about a Mr. John Mott, who was a farmer, who had recorded several sites along Dry Creek between Roseville and Rio Linda. During the Spring of 1964 and periodically into 1965, she and Mr. Mott visited 32 sites along Dry Creek. Dr. Beeson let Patti use the Saturday field class to gather excavation data for her thesis. Excavations began at CA-SAC-237 (Chatterton Site) during the Fall Semester 1964, because of low artifact yield the class moved to CA-PLA-41 (Clark Site, 31-63, SSC temporary number) in November 1964. During the Spring of 1965 and with a Summer field school excavations continued at the Clark Site and were also conducted at the Riolo Site (CA-PLA-75, 31-75 SSC temporary number). Excavations by the Spring 1964 fieldwork class were directed by Eugene Lutes at CA-PLA-64 (Shellhous Site, 31-64 SSC temp-orary number). Excavations at this latter site in-cluded the investigation of a circular depressio , thought to be a house pit of Indian origin. This feature turned out to be a filled in hand dug water well that was brick lined. The excavations were ended at about four feet because of the instability of the bricks. All of the above information, accept from the well, was incorporated into Palumbo's thesis (1966), along with data from two sites in Roseville that had been investigated by American River College under the supervision of Charles Gebhardt, former SSC graduate student.

Dr. Beeson applied in May 1964 for an antiquity permit to excavate at Pinnacle Point Cave in Tuolumne County. Michael McEachern and Ron Ralph, who were undergraduate students at SSC and members of the Mother Lode Grotto of the National Speleological Society found artifacts of prehistoric origin in this cave in the Spring of 1964. They showed them to Louis A. Payen and after a visit to the site it was decided that the cave deposits should be excavated, otherwise the site might be vandalized if other individuals discovered that artifacts were present. The CCAF agreed to provide funds for purchase of a 1500 watt generator, lumber to construct 85 feet of wooden ladders, hard hats and electric lights, bolts and a star drill for drilling the holes for hanging the ladders, electrical wire and light fixtures, and materials to make a gate to close the cave during excavations. The investigation began during the summer of 1964 with a small group of dedicated volunteers. Included were Lyle Scott (Currently a Barber in Sonora), Louis Payen (Director, archaeologist with an M.A. from SSC in 1966 and a Ph.D. 1982 from UC, Riverside), Michael McEachern (Received and M.A. in 1968 from SSC and was admitted to a Ph.D. program at the University of Alberta, currently a computer specialist in a Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama), Ron Ralph (Currently employed by the State of Texas as an archaeologists and cave specialist), John Beck (Technical Assistant in the Department of Anthropology as assistant archaeologist 1967-1975 and former graduate student, Bureau of Land Management archaeologist for southwestern Alaska 1975-1990), William Pritchard (Technical Assistant in the Department of Anthropology at SSC 1965-1967, M. A. SSC 1967, with the California State Department of Parks and Recreation until the Spring of 1993), Chase Noble (reserve deputy sheriff in El Dorado County), Roger Robinson (M.A. SSC 1968 Anthropology Instructor Antelope Valley College).

During the Fall 1964 semester excavations continued at the cave under the supervision of Louis Payen and Jerald Johnson. Because of the size of the cave, difficulty of access and the small area which could be worked at any given time the number of participants was seldom over six to ten individuals. Most of the students in the field class worked with Dr. Beeson and Ms. Palumbo on the excavations on the Dry Creek drainage between Roseville and Rio Linda. Students who participated in the project in the Fall at Pinnacle Point Cave, for varying degrees of time, included Kathy Keyser (M.A. UCD), Chase Noble, Roger Robinson, Lyle Scott, William Pritchard, Douglas Simeroth (Social Worker in Nevada), Jeffery Childress (M.A. Geography), and Barry Boyer. Numerous individuals visited the project while it was in progress. Most notable were the entire field class which arrived for a visit one Saturday with Dr. Beeson, Dr. Brigham Arnold of the Geography Department, and the numerous "friends of project participants". The work at Pinnacle Point cave led to additional work in caves in the Mother Lode by Michael McEachern, Mark Grady, Ron Ralph, Dick Peck, Louis Payen and others. These investigations culminated in a 1968 SSC thesis by McEachern which was titled "Mortuary Caves of the Mother Lode Region of California". From 1965 through 1971 several graduate students completed several papers concerning the investigations of the caves. These included a paper on the shell beads and ornaments from Pinnacle Cave by William Pritchard, an archaeological survey of Upper San Domingo Creek by Michael McEachern, a preliminary report on the Pinnacle Point Cave excavations by Louis Payen and a published article by Louis Payen and Jerald Johnson on "Current Cave Research in the Central Sierra Nevada Mountains: A Progress Report" (1965)..

The fall 1965 field class resumed excavations at CA-SAC-225 on the Deer Creek drainage in eastern Sacramento County. William Pritchard was Dr. Beeson's field assistant until 1967 when John Beck was hired to replace him as the Technical Assistant in the Department of Anthropology. Mr. Beck was the field assistant until excavations were terminated in January 1969. Fieldwork at this site extended over a period of eleven semesters (five and one half years) and included three summer field schools. The volume of material excavated remains the largest ever removed from a single site by participants in the archaeological program at CSUS. Several hundred undergraduate students worked on the site and many of them went on to became graduate students at CSUS or other institutions and several received Ph.D.s in Anthropology at such institutions as UCD, Syracuse, Cornel, Arizona, and Washington State. {top of page}

With the end of the Fall 1968 semester Dr. Beeson no longer was involved with the Saturday Fieldwork class or investigations in California. He continued to serve as the second reader on several theses on California archaeology by his real interest was the American Southwest and he was able to return to research in that region in the middle 1970s. In 1968 Professor Beeson took two students with him to the Southwest. Both of these individuals became professional archaeologists. One, Mark Grady went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona and directed the contract archaeology program at Southern Methodist University until his untimely death in an automobile accident in New Mexico. The purpose of the 1968 trip was to gather data from the surface of several archaeological sites in preparation for the establishment of a research program in the area in which Dr. Beeson had completed his Ph.D. fieldwork in the late 1950s. Nothing developed from this initial foray back into Arizona. A second attempt to get back into southwestern research occurred in 1973. Dr. Beeson approached Professor Johnson about conducting a joint project recording rock art in the Saint Johns region in Arizona, while this was readily agreed to it was not possible to implement. Professor Beeson had noted large numbers of petroglyph panels during his doctoral fieldwork, but had not recorded them as they were not related to his research project. He contacted, by letter in the Fall of 1972, the owner of much of the land he had surveyed during the late 1950s seeking permission to conduct an archaeological field school on his property. Permission was denied and there was not follow up or attempt to find some other location in which to do the proposed fieldwork.

In 1973 contact was made with the United States Forest Service (USFS) in regard to possible research in the vicinity of Flagstaff Arizona. This was a good time to seek a relationship with the USFS, since that agency was considering the possibility of conducting land exchanges to get isolated private sections of land out of the middle of forests. In order to facilitate this possibility they needed to not only have the land surveyed that they wished to acquire but they also needed to have lands they proposed to give in exchange studied. Ultimately an agreement was worked out with the USFS and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff for CSUS to conduct archaeological research at the Korosho Site. This site is north of Flagstaff toward Sunset Crater in the Doney Park area. From 1974 through 1978 CSUS conducted four summer field schools at this site, carried out surveys of the surrounding area and investigated a variety of archaeological problems. Professor Beeson had been heavily influenced concerning the "New Archaeology" through his relationship with Dr. William Longacre at the University of Arizona. He envisioned that the Korosho project would allow graduate students to pursue a variety of research problems that would demonstrate the utility of many of the tenants of the "New Archaeology". Ultimately a Pueblo of one row of connected rooms, several underlying pit houses, a large trash mound, a borrow pit full of trash and human burials and sources of rock construction material were investigated. This project helped students learn first hand that problems formulated on paper in the laboratory do not always translate very well into fieldwork that is possible to begin or complete.

Throughout the first three years of this project Professor Goldfried was co-investigator with Dr. Beeson. They were assisted by several graduate students who were gathering data for thesis topics. Foremost of these were Robert McBride, who participated all four years and completed a thesis; John Madsen, who participated for three years and completed a thesis on the origin of basalt construction materials; Michael Rondeau, who assisted one year and wrote a thesis on the projectile points; Mark Sutton, who was involved one year and wrote a thesis on Sinauga Fieldhouses; Kathy Dixon , also a one year participant took on the unenviable task of analyzing over 20,000 brown ware utilitarian pot sherds for a thesis topic, and George Schneider, while a participant only one year attempted to create a research design that could be tested in the field as his thesis topic. Several other undergraduate and graduate students participated in this project and helped it achieve some modicum of success.

Numerous innovations were attempted on the project with varying degrees of success. The failure of many of the research designs and questions to bear fruit was mostly because of the lack of a testing program prior to the beginning of excavation. For, example, based on the finding of a few turquoise beads and some calcined human bone in the trash mound it was assumed that it was the location of the cemetery for the pueblo. On the basis of this surface evidence Mark Sutton proposed a research design concerning human remains that would be recovered during the excavation of a portion of the trash mound during the initial field season in 1974. No burials were found during the testing of the trash mound and Mr. Sutton had to develop a different research question. After he was no longer affiliated with the project over 100 skeletons were found in the borrow pit which had been used as a cemetery and within some of the pueblo rooms. No surface evidence indicated that human remains would be found in these two locations.

Another interesting project was the excavation of a pit house which had been built by Dr. Beeson 20 years earlier, while he was a graduate student at the University of Arizona. It was hoped that data generated from excavating a structure of known characteristics would provide information on what happened to prehistoric pit houses when they collapsed and decayed. Unfortunately while the collapsed reconstructed structure was being excavated an summer monsoon hit and most of the remaining wood floated out of position before it could be recorded.

Unfortunately because of Dr. Beeson's heart condition he was forced to retire early and the bulk of the material from the Korosho Site was never written up by him or his students. When the loan agreement with the Museum of Northern Arizona lapsed they requested that the collection be returned to them so that other interested scholars could make use of the data. Professor Beeson indicated that he was interested in meeting his professional responsibility by producing the analysis of the site materials but he died in 1990 at the age of 64 before this could be accomplished.

Beginning with the Fall Semester 1966 Howard Goldfried, Ph.D. Candidate in Anthropology at the University of Oregon was hired by the Department of Anthropology at SSC. His Dissertation research concerned the archaeology of highland Peru. Throughout his career at CSUS Professor Goldfried has helped develop the archaeology program through a variety of ways. He innovated new courses concerning the archaeology of Peru, Egypt, Meso-America, and the Near East. His main concentration was oriented toward the study of developing civilizations and Biblical archaeology. In the late 1960s he served as the second reader on several M.A. theses with an emphasis on California Archaeology and had an occasional student who did theses on Meso-America through library research. He served as co-investigator of the Korosho site from 1974 to 1977 with Professor Beeson. {top of page}

In 1980 Dr. Goldfried became the co-director of the investigation of Tel Dor in Israel. This project concerns the excavation and study of a large mound on the Israeli coast that covers over 40 acres and is over forty feet high. It has served as an important location of human activity from perhaps as far back as the Paleolithic until the construction and use of medieval fortification on its summit. At various times it has served as a major sea port, provincial capitol and was occupied by Christian Crusaders, Roman and Hellenistic peoples, Iron and Bronze age peoples, and perhaps even earlier populations. Many students from CSUS have participated in the project and several have helped supervise the excavations and write masters theses on certain aspects of the project. Johns Berg has written on the Temple, Barry Scott on the Roman Aqueduct, Scott Baker on the ethnicity of coastal Palestine during the Persian Period, Leonard Lanigan on the Purple Dye industry that occurred at the site, and Richard Parks detailed the relationship of Dor to the Assyrian Empire. Other theses topics have been proposed and are under consideration. This project was originally planned as a 20 year excavation, with periodic breaks to allow portions of the research to be written up for publication. The first 14 years of excavation have been completed, a one year period off for writing and analysis has occurred and the fifteenth year of investigation will occur in 1995. It is now anticipated that this project will continue indefinetly because of the massiveness, complexity and importance of the site in understanding the prehistory and early history of this part of the Neareast. Since the Spring of 1992 Dr. Goldfried has worked with the Saturday field class that is investigating the Gold Rush community of Viginiatown in western Placer County. He has assumed the responsibility for most of the photography, helped provide advice and supervision when needed and taught the laboratory portion of the course in 1995.

Jerald Johnson was hired by the Department of Anthropology as a part time instructor in the Fall of 1968 before becoming a full time professor in the Spring of 1969. Professor Johnson's doctoral research included all of the known prehistory of Northeastern California. His dissertation of the ground stone industries was completed in 1984. During the Summer of 1968 he taught a field school at UCD in the Capay Valley to the northwest of Woodland California and taught several students who eventually became students at SSC. In August he, along with David Proctor and undergraduate at Berkeley and John Beck from SSC, conducted an intensive survey of the Lake Britton area for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. This led to the recording of 88 sites on the Pit River and Hat Creek and an introduction to another part of Northeastern California relevant to Professor Johnson's Ph.D. research. In December he and John Beck, a graduate student in Anthropology, spent several days in the southern Cascade foothills to the east of Red Bluff gathering additional information for the doctorate.

Professor Johnson's primary duties beginning in 1969 were to teach archaeology classes and supervise the Saturday archaeological fieldwork class. Upon assuming direction of the local archaeology program in the Department of Anthropology several changes were made in methodology. On of the first changes was converting the SSC archaeology program from using feet and inches to the metric system. Another change was the realization that a contract archaeology program could and should be carried out by the Department of Anthropology instead of through some outside organization. In addition it was thought that a research program should be developed that had several goals that were attainable through the type of program and facilities that were available at SSC.

With the end of Dr. Beeson's excavations at CA-SAC-225 in January 1969 a new location for field work was needed. Professor Johnson was approached by Eric Ritter, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, about the possibility of working at a remnant of a large Village site on the Cosumnes River that was to be destroyed by the construction of the Folsom South Canal. A contract was let to the UCD Department of Anthropology for investigations in the summer of 1969. It was agreed that SSC's field class would begin excavations during the Spring semester and continue the work in the Fall after Davis had worked during the summer. This would insure that a much larger sample would be obtainable than would be possible through contract funds. Based on information at the time it was assumed that the site would be destroyed sometime during the Spring of 1970.

Before excavations began in February 1969 a 1.5x1.5 meter grid was established over the site and soil samples were taken every three meters going in both a north/south and east/west direction. The over 400 samples were collected from below the duff layer and were tested for acidity and alkalinity. A pH map was constructed by Ron Melander of San Francisco State College and units were chosen to sample areas of both high and low alkalinity. Blocks of units were set up over highly alkaline areas to see what might be causing the increased basic reaction of the soil. After excavation it was determined that all of the highly alkaline areas tested contained burned features. This included fire hearths, a burned structure, a cooking area and the location of an earth oven. Areas of low alkalinity did not have any buried features associated with them. All of the excavated deposit investigated by SSC was wet screened over 1/8 inch mesh screens. This resulted in the recovery of almost 70,000 pieces of modified and unmodified bone from the 80 excavated units. A strike and other delays during the construction of the Folsom South Canal allowed excavations to continue at CA-SAC-267 until April 1973 when most of the remaining deposit was destroyed. This added time allowed for the investigation of a cemetery containing 45 graves in the subsoil exposed in a woodlot on the southern part of the site on the adjacent property.

The Davis investigation in the Summer of 1969 also tried various techniques to increase the variety of materials recovered from the site. Floatation of an entire unit was done with a screen setup in Deer Creek, to the immediate east of the midden, and during the excavation of an off site unit what appeared to be a sweathouse was located and completely exposed. The material recovered by Davis was collected from 1/8 inch mesh screens through dry screening. Soil Samples for pollen analysis were collected and analyzed at Davis. This resulted in the discovery that pollen does preserve in middens in the Sacramento Valley.

While a crew from Davis worked at CA-SAC-267 in the summer of 1969 Professor Johnson conducted a Summer Field School in the Southern Cascade foothills. His field assistant was John Beck the Technical Assistant in the Department of Anthropology. Excavations were begun at CA-TEH-328 on the North Fork of Dye Creek. A large structure was located and exposed and several units excavated. While excavations continued at the site John Beck and Professor Johnson led survey parties to nearby portions of the Dye Creek drainage and several additional prehistoric and historic archaeological resources were recorded. A three day trip was taken down into Mill Creek Canyon to show students the terrain and types of sites on a drainage that was much larger than Dye Creek.

1970-1979 {top of page}

Field work continued at CA-SAC-267 in the Fall 1969 and Spring 1970 semesters. Steven Humphreys started a thesis project with excavations at CA-BUT-301 (Kathy's Rockshelter) in the Spring. On some Saturdays the entire field class when to this site near Oroville, while on most only a few students when with Steve for the weekend. During the summer of 1970 another field school returned for six weeks to the southern Cascades and continued work at CA-TEH-328 and begun the testing of CA-TEH-372, a small seasonal campsite on the upper end of the North Fork of Dye Creek. An attempt was made to show students in the field school all of the different environments and types of sites in Northeastern California in four days. This was not possible and it was decided that any future trips would have to be at least a week long. Students did get to see part of the Pit River Country, Fall and Little Hot Springs Valley, Medicine Lake Highland, Lava Beds National Monument, Goose Lake, Surprise Valley and the Warner Mountains and those that wanted were able to climb Lassen Peak. Also during this course students from a joint U.C.L.A. and Chico State field school visited our excavations at CA-TEH-328 and -372. Later we were able to visit their excavations near Chico and then drive out the road to Cohasset and eventually down Ponderosa Way to Deer Creek. We visited a site at Graham's Crossing and camped for the night with the intent of crossing the creek and visiting several other sites downstream on the following day. During the night a major rain storm developed and by first light everybody was thoroughly soaked since we had no tents with us. A previously unknown pitted boulder was found at the site at Graham's Crossing but since everybody was wet and cold we left the canyon and returned to our field camp on the Dye Creek Ranch.

After the field school was concluded Timothy Gage (Ph.D. Graduate Student at Pennsylvania State University) and Professor Johnson surveyed over 100 miles of existing and proposed canals for the Nevada Irrigation District in Placer County. Eleven sites of various sizes and complexities were recorded.

Professor Johnson and Brian Bibby drove to Black Rock on Mill Creek after the field school and surveyed over two miles downstream from the campground and recorded several important archaeological sites. Including what may have been the last village Ishi lived at on Mill Creek before moving permanently onto Deer Creek. During September, before the beginning of the Fall Semester several caves in Nevada were visited and then additional survey work was undertaken on the Dye Creek drainage. A trip was also made to the Deer Creek drainage in the southern Cascades to the south of Dye Creek with a graduate student who was looking for a potential thesis project. A group of students was taken to Dye Creek over Thanksgiving break in November so that Gerald Heine could film the environment and archaeological sites on the Dye Creek drainage as part of his thesis project. With the beginning of the Fall Semester the investigation of CA-SAC-267 continued until December. It was anticipated that the work at the Blodgett Site would continue through the Spring of 1971, but with notification that a large site was in danger of destruction just south of Stockton a trip was made to assess the situation in early April. It was discovered that a large prehistoric mound had been partially levelled during the acquisition of borrow for the construction of Inter State 5 and that human remains were scattered over a large area. The investigation of CA-SAC-267 was stopped and from the middle of April until the middle of June three or more individuals from Sac State stayed at the site, CA-SJO-91 (French Camp Slough), 24 hours a day. This led to the recovery of 151 separate, mostly partial skeletons and over 5,300 cultural and faunal remains.

Additional work might have been conducted at CA-SJO-91 if a summer field school had not already been scheduled. The rest of CA-SJO-91 was destroyed by June 21st. Students attending the summer field school were supposed to investigate CA-SHA-385 at Lake Britton on the Pit River. The work was to be under the direction of Patti Johnson with financial and logistic support from the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (P.G. and E.). The week before the class was to have begun Native Americans of the Pit River group occupied P.G. and E. Campgrounds in the vicinity and the work at Lake Britton was cancelled. Arrangements were made with the Dye Creek Ranch to return to the Southern Cascade foothills and excavations were carried out at CA-TEH-331 (Allen Ridge Shelter). Additional surveys were conducted on the adjacent drainage to the east of Allen Ridge. {top of page}

While the work was going on at Dye Creek Professor Johnson was lobbying two bills through the California State Legislature that would set up a state archaeological survey and have a registry for professional archaeologists. Both bills passed the legislature but the one that was left unmodified was vetoed by Governor Reagan and the other which had been turned into legislation that said the issue should be studied was signed. This ultimately led to a statewide task force made up of representatives from the U.C. and CSU campuses, the Native American community, the state historical society, the paleontological community, the California State Department of Parks and Recreation and the associated general contractors. Professor Johnson was the original Executive Secretary of this group.

At the same time the Department's technical assistant, John Beck, along with Louis (Sammy) Payen held a summer field school at Samwel Cave on Shasta Lake. The purpose of this project was to reopen the Pleistocene entrance to the cave that had originally be investigated by John Merriam of the U.C. Berkeley Paleontological Department in 1906. The Pleistocene deposit in the bottom of the cave contained one of the most diverse faunal collections in California and the base of a Clovis point had been found in Merriam's backdirt pile. The work begun in 1971 was supposed to continue in 1972 but after the initial effort the project was abandoned.

CA-SAC-267 had still not been destroyed by the Fall of 1971 so the field class returned to continue excavations. Another graduate student, Anthony Consiglio, was looking for a project for a thesis was allowed to take a few students from the class and Bud Journey, the teaching assistant, to begin mapping CA-SAC-127, which was about one mile upstream on the Deer Creek-Cosumnes River floodplain so that some test excavations could be done at that site. Also during the Fall students were taken to the location of CA-SAC-53 and CA-SAC-54 further up the Cosumnes to learn mapping skills. Arrangements were made for two other graduate students to live at an old homestead on the Dye Creek Ranch during the Fall 1971 and Spring 1972 academic year to pursue possible theses projects.

Judy Rose, a graduate student began working on her thesis project on San Domingo Creek in Calaveras County in the Summer of 1970. She continued in the Fall and cleaned out the old Alaska Log House which is now used as the tasting room for the Stevenot Winery. This old structure is on an archaeological site and a snake head type atlatl spur was recovered during the cleanup operations. In the Fall excavations began at Papke Cave and a large midden where the Stevenot Winery is now located. In the Spring of 1972 the Saturday field class journeyed to San Domingo Creek to help Judy in the completion of her fieldwork at Papke Cave and the large village site. A burial encountered in the midden was recorded and left in place and covered up.

After many discussions it was determined that the summer was not the optimum time to be conducting archaeological surveys in the southern Cascade foothills. The dry grass was often knee high or higher, the large rattlesnake population was out and very active, and of even greater import it was not the time of year when the ancestors of the Southern Yana and Yahi lived in the foothills. In the Spring of 1972 several weekend trips were scheduled for the field class. The graduate students living at the old Facht homestead found that the cattle grazed the grass down close to the ground and made it very easy to see the surface of the archaeological sites. Some filming continued on Gerald Heine's thesis and it was discovered that pitted boulder petroglpyhs and rock rings were visible. Also found during the spring of 1972 were two developed springs close to former Indian campsites.

While the work in the southern Cascades was continuing word came to the University that another large site south of Stockton was being used as borrow for the construction of I-5. A visit to this site near Manteca revealed the remnant of a formerly large village that if not tested would soon be destroyed. Permission was granted from the landowner to work at the site and the study of CA-SAC-267 (also see photo 18) was stopped so that work could began at CA-SJO-165 (Brown Site). The study of the Brown Site consumed the remainder of the Spring semester.

During the summer of 1972 excavations were initiated at a large Village site on Dye Creek at the edge of the foothills. Thirty-nine students from throughout the U.S. and Canada participated in the fieldwork. Graduate field assistants included John Humbert, David Proctor, Ann Peak, and James Johnston. Additional survey work was conducted by Johnston and Brian Bibby inside the mouth of Mill Creek and around the vicinity of Black Rock. Humbert had four students each week at a survey camp at the Facht homestead and Proctor took three students each day and walked up the canyon a mile and a half to continue work at CA-TEH-300 (Keeler Site). Many of the techniques suggested as part of the "New Archaeology" were tested at CA-TEH-600. A stratified random sample was chosen and units were dug off the site as well. During the field school the students were taken on a seven day trip through northeastern California to acquaint them with various archaeological sites and environments. Visited were the Pit River drainage, Fall River and Little Hot Springs Valley, Medicine Lake Highlands, Modoc Glass Mountain, Lava Beds National Monument, Tule and Clear Lake basins, the Devils Garden basalt flow, Goose Lake, the Warner Mountains and obsidian sources, Several sites in Surprise Valley that had been excavated by UCB and UCD, including Bare Cave and the Kings Dog Site and finally a stop was made at Lassen Peak on the way back to Red Bluff.  {top of page}

When the field school was over after six weeks a contract had been arranged with the California State Department of Transportation to test excavate CA-SJO-3 before it was destroyed during the construction of I-5. This work was under the direction of John Humbert and was suspended after three weeks when it was discovered that most of the site had already been destroyed.

In the fall of 1972 most of the Saturday field class returned to work at CA-SAC-267. A portion of the students were sent to CA-SAC-127 (Augustine Site) to begin the excavations of eight units started in the spring. This work was under the supervision of Tony Consiglio and Bud Journey. In the spring of 1973 work continued at the Blodgett Site. While students and faculty were on spring break the site was destroyed during construction of the Folsom South Canal. Several important features were under investigation and the university was supposed to be notified before construction was resumed. It was quite a shock to arrive on the Saturday after Easter week and find the units gone. Fortunately it was possible to move the students up river to CA-SAC-127.

The summer field school in 1973 returned to the Southern Cascade foothills. The class was divided into three groups. Several students stayed in a field camp at the edge of the foothills and excavated at CA-TEH-600 (Juanhijo Site) under the supervision of Professor Johnson, while most of the class set up a field camp in Mill Creek Canyon and began the testing of Deadman's Cave (CA-TEH-290) under the direction of James Johnston, who was assisted by James Hutchins and Gerald Heine. After a seven day trip through Northeastern California and Northwestern Nevada during the third week of the course, to acquaint students with the different prehistoric cultures and environments, all of the class participated in the excavations at CA-TEH-290. While on the trip it was discovered in Cedarville in Surprise Valley that Thomas Layton of Louisiana State University was digging at Last Supper Cave in the Virgin Valley 25 miles southwest of Denio, Nevada. He invited SSC faculty and students to visit the excavations of what is one of the more important stratified caves in the Great Basin. The class visited most of the same locations as those seen by the 1972 class. The logistics of getting people, equipment and food into and out of Mill Creek Canyon were difficult but accomplished without any serious problems.

In the Fall of 1973 the field class returned to CA-SJO-165 and did additional work as the buildings were being removed from the site. This led to the discovery of several cremations and partial interments under the house. In late October 1973 Professor Johnson along with graduate students Jim Johnston, Greg Greenway, and Bill Soule conducted a survey of the area from the south entrance of Lassen Volcanic National Park to the Sulphur Works. This led to the rediscovery of CA-TEH-583 and CA-TEH-596 that were originally recorded by Adan Treganza in 1962. The weather was cold and rainy and on the last day of the survey it began snowing above us and just as we finished the field work the snow began to stick to the ground around our field camp.

During the Spring of 1974 instead of excavating nine weekend trips were taken to the Southern Cascades for the purpose of finding additional sites. James Johnston and Dorothy Bell had been living at the Facht Place and collecting soil samples for Jim's thesis on carbonate dating. These weekend trips were always an adventure and included snow in April and crossing often swollen creeks. Several new sites were recorded and the records for many other previously noted cultural resources were improved. Kenneth Wilson lived at the old Apperson Cow Camp on Wildcat Creek during this time and started the survey of this previously unknown 21 square kilometer drainage. This is the only southern branch of Dye Creek. During the course of his work 65 archaeological sites were found. One of the most unusual sites was a large camp that had 23 rock rings in association. No excavations were conducted during this work.

There was no summer field school in 1974. Instead Professor Johnson and Patti Johnson worked on archaeological surveys for the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. A major survey was conducted in regard to the operation of the Pit 1 Powerhouse. Several days were spent in a helicopter and boat relocating many of the sites recorded by Adan Treganza in a 1953 survey. Most of the 70 sites noted by Treganza were relocated and 44 new sites were recorded. The new sites found and those revisited included many with some of the best preserved middens and house pits ever seen on a prehistoric village. Also recorded were fish weirs and pitted boulder petroglyphs. Also of interest was the finding of Native Tobacco growing on a midden that had been disturbed by a fire set by lightening.  {top of page}

During the fall of 1974 several graduate students in the Saturday field work class and Professor Johnson surveyed portions of the Cosumnes River from Sloughhouse to the delta. With collections from CA-SAC-127 and -267 near Sloughhouse it was hoped that a site could be located further west along the river that would be suitable for testing. Several previously recorded sites were visited and CA-SAC-265, off of Twin Cities Road was chosen for investigation in the Spring of 1975 (Sheeders 1982). Native tobacco was seen growing wild throughout the lower Cosumnes River flood plain. Permission was granted for visiting the location of CA-SAC-6 and several other nearby sites on both sides of the River. After CA-SAC-147 was rediscovered the field class was allowed to use it for mapping practice. While the map was never finished it gave the students experience in using the transit and stadia rod.

Another project which took place was a survey on Mill and Deer creeks for United States Forest Service in the fall of 1974 (Johnson and Wiant 1975). A four person field crew worked from three to four days a week throughout much of the fall semester. This investigation was intended to fund pure research by the university, that would also result in information useful to the Forest Service for management purposes. A large number of prehistoric archaeological sites were recorded that appeared to have been little disturbed. Many had house pits, one had a rock slide (CA-TEH-620), a few would rockshelters, pitted boulder petroglyphs were noted as well a few rock rings.

Before excavations began at CA-SAC-265 a contour map was made, a grid established, and soil samples were collected so that a pH map could be constructed (Map 3). Some dark midden was noted and it was expected that this site would provide information from a time period comparable to CA-SAC-267 up river. To our surprise the overall alkalinity of the site was low with much of the deposit just slightly alkaline or neutral. Excavations revealed a highly compacted midden and a group of artifacts which dated mostly between 2,500 to 3,500 or more years ago. Work continued on CA-SAC-265 in the fall. Three events occurred that were less than joyful. On most saturdays we had to remove bottles, cans, and other refuse that was dumped into the units by fisherman. One Saturday we found one of our units full of disarticulated human bone. These remains had apparently been picked up on a ranch on Dry Creek to the south where we had been told that at least two archaeological sites with burials in them had been bulldozed. The last difficulty was a visit from fish and game wardens. They wanted to know if we had a permit to pump water out of the slough for wet screening. We said no and they indicated that in the future it would be required, even if the water coming out of the slough was as dirty as that going back after it passed through the screens. Work was stopped at CA-SAC-265 at the end of the semester and not resumed until the 1982 (Sheeders 1982).

During the Spring Semester 1976 field work was shifted upstream and across the slough from CA-SAC-265. During the reconnaissance in 1974 CA-SAC-67 had been relocated and it appeared to have a much larger late looking midden that might be comparable in time to CA-SAC-267. The site was determined to be 360 meters on its long axis and about 80 meters wide. After a grid was established units were chosen by Professor Johnson walking down the center line of the long axis and throwing wooden stakes over his shoulder. This established a modified random sample with some units set in all parts of the site. The investigation of CA-SAC-67 was intended to be spread out over at least 20 years. Excavations were terminated in December 1982, however, for a variety of reasons. The necessity to cross two sloughs, one in a boat; the cold and foggy weather in the winter which often made it difficult to see more than 100 feet in any direction made driving home dangerous in late November and early December; the participation of students from field classes from the University of California at Davis (working under the direction of G.James West), American River College students (under the supervision of Alice Kingsnorth), and a class from Cosumnes River College speeded up the collection of data to the point that it could not be processed. The problems at CA-SAC-67 were compounded because virtually all of the excavations were wet screened over 1/8 inch mesh screens. The volume of material collected mounted up in a hurry and soon overflowed the laboratory. The discovery of at least two separate cemeteries, burials dating from less than 500 to over 3,500 years old and the vandalism of several of the interments while the class was gone over the summer of 1982 led to the cessation of the field work. Another factor that was taken into consideration was the flooding of the site in the winter of 1981, with the subsequent loss of plywood unit covers, screens and tool boxes.  {top of page}

During July and August of 1975 William Soule directed excavations at CA-SAC-329 at the confluence of Georgiana Slough and the Sacramento River (Soule 1976). This site originally was thought to be over ten feet deep, with a stratified deposit separated by a band of sterile alluvium. The upper deposit had a mottled appearance and contained no intact features while the lower level included one undisturbed burial and several features. It was later discovered that both layers represented the same midden. The upper level consisted of midden dug up from the site and dumped on another portion of CA-SAC-329 to increase the height of the levee. This site belonged to the time period between 1,000 to 1,500 years ago and contained a burned black walnut cache that established the antiquity of that tree along the Sacramento River.

In the summer and fall of 1975 four individuals from the Archaeological Study Center conducted the field survey of several timber sales for Lassen National Forest (Wayne Wiant, Personal Communication 1975). These surveys were spread out over much of the Almanor District and included land in Warner Valley, near Lake Almanor, in the vicinity of the articulation of the geological formations of the Northern Sierra Nevada and the Southern Cascades, and near Mill Creek and Childs Meadows. A variety of sites were found and included campsites, bedrock mortars, and quarries.

Wayne Wiant began a survey on Lower Mill Creek in January 1977 to gather data toward the completion of a thesis on the use of environmental resources in the southern Cascade foothills (1981). A large number of archaeological sites were recorded on lower Mill Creek between January 1977 and the summer of 1980. Included were several rockshelters, pitted boulders, house pits, and village and campsites.

After continuing excavations at CA-SAC-67 during the Fall Semester 1976 and Spring of 1977, a summer field school was held in Southern Cascades. Excavations were resumed at CA-TEH-290, with the data from the site to be used by Gregory Greenway as a thesis. The students lived at High Bridge Campground, at about 5,000 feet in the Almanor District of Lassen National Forest (USFS), for one week to learn how to locate archaeological sites. This was done in conjunction with a contract with Lassen National Forest and was directed by Wayne Wiant. Students then moved to Black Rock Campground on Mill Creek for a week to learn mapping. One of the two sites chosen for study was believed to be Ishi's fathers village at which a massacre took place in which most of Ishi's family, including his father was killed. During this time Wayne Wiant continued to direct the paid field crew in completing the archaeological survey of the Warner Creek area for the USFS. After the maps were completed the field school hit the road and travelled throughout northeastern California and up into south central Oregon to visit important archaeological sites and see the environments in which they were located. Included was a trip to Crater Lake (the scene of the infamous explosion of Mt. Mazama 7,000 years ago).

Once arriving back in Red Bluff the crankshaft on the one ton truck broke two miles from the Dye Creek Ranch. We towed it to the ranch, removed the radiator, removed the bolts connecting the engine to the transmission and the frame, made a sling of rope between a pole on each side of the engine and six individuals lifted the engine out and put into the departments pickup. Gerald Heine, our technical assistant, took the engine apart, had some parts machined, put it back together again, brought it back to Red Bluff and the same six individuals lifted it back into the one ton and after the bolts were tightened and the radiator installed it was once again ready for the road.

The last three weeks of the field school were spent in excavating at CA-TEH-290. A large ash deposit which cut across several units and extended into the sidewalls suggested that the midden which was composed of a large percentage of dry organic material may have caught on fire and burned for a period of time. Several pieces of ground stone, a large number of projectile points and masses of animal bone (mostly deer) were recovered from the deposit.

After the field school was over Professor Johnson and Marianne Russo had the opportunity to visit the Oregon and Washington coast and spend time at the Ozzette Site in Washington. This incredible archaeological resource was comprised of wooden houses that had been buried in a mud slide that preserved all of the contents as well as organic debris that had been discarded outside the structures. The material from this site is now on display at the Makah Indian Reservation in a museum staffed and operated by the tribe.

During the Fall the field class continued excavations at CA-SAC-67. In October Michael Rondeau directed a Study Center crew during the investigations at CA-NEV-199 at Truckee (Elevation 6,000 feet; Rondeau 1982). At that time of the year Truckee is one of the coldest places in the continental United States and temperatures were often below 20 degrees fahrenheit. After a freezing night camped out at Donner Lake State Park the wind blew dirt all over everybody during the day. This important site was situated on top of a Tioga period glacial morain that dated to 9,200 years ago. The oldest carbon date from CA-NEV-199 was closer to 6,200 years, with most of the deposit probably dating 1,500 to 3,000 B.P.  {top of page}

During 1977 and 1979 the Archaeological Study Center (ASC) was under contract to conduct cultural resource reconnaissance projects throughout much of Northern California. These projects ranged from an acre or two to over 1,000 acres in size. The exception was the proposed Parks Bar alternative to the Marysville Lake project of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Johnson and Theodoratus 1978). That investigation encompassed almost 8,000 acres and led to the recording of over 600 archaeological sites. Most of the survey was done by graduate and undergraduate students from CSUS while the historic archival and ethnographic research was directed by Professor Dorothea Theodoratus of the Department of Anthropology. Most of the archaeological field work was done by graduate students under the direction of Dr. Johnson.

Excavations continued in the Spring of 1978 at CA-SAC-67, with excavations directed by Marianne Russo conducted later in the year near CA-YOL-132. Archaeological field work on the proposed Sonora Highway 49 Bypass led to the discovery of a chert quarry. This site was test excavated in the summer of 1979 by crews from the ASC (Rondeau 1979). Excavations continued at CA-SAC-67 in the Fall of 1978, 24 miles south of Sacramento, while Kenneth Wilson gathered additional site data for his thesis on Wildcat Creek in Tehama County. Gregory Greenway with a host of volunteers continued to excavate at CA-TEH-290 in 1979 and 1980 to complete the trench that had been worked on during the 1977 field school. This ended the field work on the Dye Creek Ranch until the Spring of 1995. During the Spring of 1979 the field class began an archaeological survey of the Salt Creek drainage in eastern Tehama County on the Hogs Back or Tuscan Ranch. Field work continued at that location under the supervision of Professor Johnson and Marianne Russo until 1983. Over that four year period 89 new sites were recorded and 1979 #5 was test excavated with summer field schools under the direction of Marianne in 1980, 1981 and 1983. The information derived from this project is part of a thesis that will combine information from both the Salt Creek and Dye Creek drainages. During the spring semester excavations continued at CA-SAC-67 and four Saturdays were spent recording and starting a map of the cultural resources associated with the "Indian Rock Corral" in Orangevale on the Placer and Sacramento County line. This latter project was done as a training exercise and as a favor for the Sacramento County Parks Department, who had recently purchased the site.

During the summer of 1979 Dr. Johnson directed the archaeological survey of the Vasilikos Valley in Cyprus (Map 19,page 92). Besides the recording of 54 new sites dating from the Neolithic to Medieval times he co-directed with Larissa Hordynsky the initial test excavations of Kalavasos Ayios Dhmitrios, which is now one of the more important Late Bronze Age sites in the eastern Mediterranean (Johnson and Hordynsky 1980). Ayios Dhmitrios, besides being a large town, was also a major production site for bronze and stone tools. The surface of the site contained a large amount of milling equipment made from large diabase cobbles that were being split in half and pecked into mullers along a ravine along it's eastern edge. Tombs have been found and excavations have continued through 1995 and are expected to be carried out well into the future.

An archaeological survey of the Six Mile subdivision in Calaveras County in 1979 led to the discovery of the Six Mile Rancheria (Maniery 1983). Archival research by Gary Maniery in Calaveras County and at the Smithsonian Institution resulted in the discovery of many old photographs of both the rancheria and some of its occupants. Eventually Gary was able to find two elder Native American Men who had lived at the rancheria prior to 1928 when it was abandoned. One individual, Manuel Jeff, had no photographs of family and when Gary was able to provide him with images of his parents, brother and other relatives it was a very emotional event. He had not seen any photographs of his parents since their deaths in the 1920s. The Six Mile Rancheria study along with the addition of the Murpheys Rancheria became the focus of Gary's thesis.

1980-1989 {top of page}

In 1980 Regina Siciliano-Kutchins finished a thesis on early land use in southern Sacramento County north of the delta. She interviewed several Native Americans, including an individual who was 96 years old, in an attempt to see if any living individuals had relatives who had knowledge about the portion of the Cosumnes River drainage near CA-SAC-67.

Excavations at CA-SAC-67 continued in the Fall of 1979 with the emphasis placed on the exposure of a large depression thought to be a dance house. During the Spring Semester 1980 surveys were continued on Hooper, Flume and Meeker Creeks, which are three branches of Salt Creek and some excavations occurred at CA-SAC-67. Greenway occasionally took small groups of volunteers to Deadman Cave, with some students in the Saturday field class also participating. Wayne Wiant also continued his thesis survey work on lower Mill Creek. The Summer Field School in 1980 began excavations at Hooper 1979 #5. The investigation of this site was oriented toward the investigation of several units from the midden that were chosen in a random manner and the testing of three of the six rock rings.

Michael Rondeau became Research Director of the Archaeological Study Center in the Spring of 1980 while Professor Johnson was on sabbatical leave. Starting in the fall of 1979 Mike began to contact environmental firms, local government and state and federal agencies soliciting potential field work. This resulted in a very active period of survey and excavations work which lasted well past when he left to ASC in late 1981 to work for the State Historic Preservation Office. Under Mike's supervision Steven Dondero directed excavations at the Tofanelli Ranch (CA-PLA-329) in western Placer County, and Rondeau supervised the 1980 excavations at the Faith Site (CA-PLA-271)in western Placer County, also in 1980 the Salmon Creek Excavations (CA-SIE-82) for the U.S. Forest Service, and the 1981 study of the Mohawk Village Site (CA-PLU-411) in Plumas County (with the assistance of Daryl Noble, Steven Dondero, and Lynn Furnis).

In 1981 another wonderful spring was spent with the field class in the southern Cascades on Hooper and Meeker creeks. Several new sites were recorded. Many of these were small seasonal campsites while a few larger sites with house pits and lots of ground stone may have been winter village sites of the Southern Yana and their ancestors. Some of the field class students worked at the Bartleson Mound (CA-ELD-426) under the direction of Steven Dondero with the assistance of John Dougherty. Another summer field school was led by Marianne Russo who continued the excavations at 1979#3 for the first part of the class and then the students moved to CA-ELD-426 to help Steven Dondero finish the excavation portion of his thesis project (1983). The Bartleson Site contained a lot of ground stone and most of the projectile points suggested it was used primarily between 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. A single burial was located which was studied on the site and reburied in the same place it came from in accordance with the wishes of the local Indian community.

In 1981 a new project began which was to last until 1990. It started with the Dutch Gulch Lake portion of the Cottonwood Creek Project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The archaeological survey began in July and lasted until December. The requirements of the contract were to complete, if possible, a 100 percent reconnaissance of the 24,000 acre project. Initially three field crews of four individuals were given tracts of land to survey and when sites were located minimal recording was done. Later after the initial survey was completed two recording crews, one oriented toward prehistoric remains and the other historic sites did the final detailed recording of the sites. Only 38 sites had been previously recorded at Dutch Gulch with the new investigation locating those plus 245 new cultural resources. Crew Chiefs on this phase of the project were Steven Dondero, Terry Schuster and John Dougherty, with Hans Feickert managing

the landowner contacts and the field work. Dr. Johnson was the Principal Investigator and Dr. Dorothea Theodoratus was the Co-Principal Investigator for ethnographic and ethnohistorical studies, and she and Clinton Blount coordinated the participation of the Native American community in regard to the study.

The field class investigation of CA-SAC-67 continued in the fall of 1981. While exploring the base of the large structure pit a substantial number of burials were discovered below the mud packed floor. One of these turned out to be from the Windmiller Culture and was probably over 3,500 years in age. It was lying face down in a shallow pit in the subsoil and had been cut in half by the individuals who had constructed the dance house. Most of the other interments were from the period 900 to 1,500 years ago and several had also been partially excavated and removed during the construction of this possible ceremonial structure. American River College had also found human remains in the units they were excavating in the southeastern portion of the site.

The spring field class in 1982 spent part of the time at CA-SAC-67 and part of the time on trips to the Hooper and Meeker creek drainages in the Southern Cascades. The ASC continued to conduct a significant number of surveys in 1982 and an extensive auguring and evaluation of CA-SAC-164 was completed under the supervision of Eleanor Derr and Kenneth McIvers. A major site in the proposed Dutch Gulch Lake Project (CA-SHA-290) had been damaged by exploration for gold and was selected for investigation during the summer after it was possibly slated for destruction. The field work was under the supervision of Professor Johnson and the field crew consisted of from 7 to 20 volunteers on Saturdays and Sundays. Excavations continued on weekends at this site throughout much of the Fall semester and the Saturday field class divided their time between working at CA-SAC-67 and CA-SHA-290. Individuals working on the weekends shared a house on the south Fork of Cottonwood Creek with the ASC Survey Crew, which was now investigating the proposed 22,000 acre Tehama Reservoir. Dinner time was always interesting because no one knew quite what to expect and those peach daiquiris elucidated quite a bit of comment. Excavations were finished at CA-SHA-290 on the North Fork, carried out at CA-TEH-742 on the Middle Fork, and at CA-TEH-1264 on the South Fork of Cottonwood Creek by the Tehama Lake field crew when they finished the survey.

Excavations at CA-SAC-67 were completed during December with the removal of several interments in a driving rain storm. The excavators had to dig under black plastic tarps and this made it very difficult to difficult to finish the field work. {top of page}

The Spring of 1983 proved to be interesting from an archaeological point of view. Surveys continued on the Hooper and Meeker Creek drainage. The ASC contracted with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete a 100 percent survey of their Black Butte Lake Project on Stony Creek in Tehama and Glenn Counties. Dorothea Theodoratus and Clinton Blount were again the Co-Principal Investigators for the Ethnographic, Historic, and Native American liaison portion of the project. In February it was reported that human remains were being eroded into the North Fork of Stony Creek from archaeological site CA-TEH-10. A visit to the site revealed that additional burials were in danger from erosion and vandalism. Plans were made to begin excavations to determine the extent of the burial area and develop recommendations for preservation or protection of the remains. Agreement was reached with the Grindstone Nomlaki Indian Community and excavations were to begin in April. Heavy spring storms backed up Black Butte Lake into the North Fork of Stony Creek and CA-TEH-10 was covered with three to four feet of water. It was not possible to begin the excavation of the cemetery until July 1983. The ASC survey crew finished their work by the end of June and Professor Johnson and John Burrows Chair of the Grindstone Indian Burial Committee visited CA-TEH-10 the week before the fourth of July weekend to remove any human remains and artifacts that might be exposed to avoid drawing attention to the site. Four burials were removed and a fifth was left in the bank and covered up. When excavations began in July Steven Dondero served as Field Director and John Dougherty as Crew Chief and Native Americans served as site guardians 16 hours each day and night when the archaeological field crew was not present. Their presence was needed for almost six weeks. In order to expedite the recovery of the human remains a backhoe was used to pedestal the cemetery and the field crew was doubled by hiring several graduate and undergraduate students from California State University, Chico. Approximately 200 complete and partial skeletons were removed from and area of 36 square meters, with the work completed on August 17, 1983 and back filling finished on August 19, 1983 (Johnson and Dondero 1990). The human remains and associated artifacts were taken to CSUS where they were cleaned, studied and analyzed until March 1985 when the were reburied in accordance with the Nomlaki's wishes at the Mountain Home Cemetery.

Eleanor Derr of the ASC directed test excavations on Toomes Creek in Tehama County in the spring (1983) and Marianne Russo taught another summer field school in the Southern Cascade foothills with excavations continuing at 1979 #5. When the removal of the cemetery from CA-TEH-10 was approximately half completed Dr. Judith Tordoff took three of the crew members, hired additional personal and began the test excavations at five prehistoric sites in the proposed Tehama Lake area on the South Fork of Cottonwood Creek (Johnson and Tordoff 1987). Included were the sampling of a variety of sites from various locations along the creek.

The Fall 1983 field class began a new project by starting excavations at CA-SAC-157 on the lower American River within 20 minutes of the CSUS campus. This study was initiated to provide a controlled data base from a large midden along the river so that many of the other sites which had limited testing could be put into some time of valid chronological framework. A second purpose was to identify the location of the cemetery on this site so that it could be avoided if any houses were to be built at this location. An experiment was also tried at this site when a faculty member and students from Rancho Cordova High School were allowed to participate in the excavations. Like the investigations at CA-SAC-67 on the lower Cosumnes River the study at CA-SAC-157 was intended to span a number of years so that a fairly large data base could be recovered. Excavations were eventually terminated at the end of the 1991 spring semester. It was also important that agreement had been reached with the Native American community that no human remains would be removed from the site and that they would be avoided. Initially after a grid was established several trenches were selected for excavation which would began away from the known location of interments and gradually move in their direction to facilitate delimiting the cemetery. It was discovered during the first semester that the upper 30 centimeters or so of the deposit contained no intact features because of the plowing, discing and other activities associated with the farming and planting of an almond orchard on the site in 1964. The students in the fall field and laboratory class spent much of the time in the laboratory sorting, cleaning and processing the material from CA-TEH-10 under the supervision of Kenneth McIvers.

The Spring 1984 field class continued to work at CA-SAC-157 with some units beginning to get below the plow zone. The artifacts discovered in the first two semesters of excavation indicated that the site had been first lived at between 2,500 to 3,000 years ago and then abandoned until about 1,500 B.P. when it was reoccupied until about 900 B.P. Professor Johnson taught the class and was assisted by Ernie Decater and several other graduate students. Some trips were also made to the Hooper and Meeker creek drainages to continue the archaeological survey.

In 1984 a Summer field class was held in conjunction with the Cottonwood Creek Project, Test excavations were conducted at 13 historic sites and 6 prehistoric sites (Tordoff with Seldner 1987; Dondero and Johnson 1988). Backhoe testing of terrace deposits and the Chinese Store on Roaring River was also done. Students in the field class also took a short trip through northeastern California for four days. A skip loader was experimented with in excavations at CA-SHA-291. One of the sites tested was CA-SHA-1144/H which contained the depression from a large dance house (Figures 20 and 21). This was partially cleared a revealed a large number of burned beams that were dated through dendro chronology to 1872 (White 1986).  {top of page}

In the Fall of 1984 some survey work was done at Meeker Creek and excavations were continued at CA-SAC-157. The Archaeological Study Center worked at CA-STA-167/H under the direction of Ernie Decater (1985). This site contained three interments, which after they were removed and studied they and the associated artifacts were turned over to the Miwok for reburial.

In the Spring and Fall of 1985 and Spring of 1986 excavations continued at CA-SAC-157. As additional units were opened toward the northeast the finding of a larger number of shell beads indicated that burials were not two far away. In Trench 9S part of the excavation extended to over 280 centimeters in a pit that had been excavated into the subsoil in prehistoric times. A burial was located in the 19N trench and left in place and covered up. The eastern part of the 19N trench contained a possible house floor, fire hearth, cooking area and piles of broken fire fractured rock. Ernie Decater continued to assist Professor Johnson with the field class. The high water resulting from the 1986 February floods in California exposed another Native American Cemetery through erosion at CA-TEH-10 (Johnson 1990). A small field crew under the supervision of John Dougherty began excavations to remove exposed human remains from the stream bank and evaluate the extent of the possible cemetery. The decision was made to suspend operations until high water receded and a fully developed investigation could be undertaken. Once again a cooperative agreement was worked out with the Grindstone Indian community.

In order to determine the extent of the work that needed to be done at CA-TEH-10 arrangements were made for a equipment operator with a power auger to visit the site over a two day period to determine the extent of the new cemetery and to determine if possible if any other interments existed at the site. A four person crew consisting of Professor Johnson, John Dougherty, Kenneth McIvers, and a representative of the Grindstone Indian Community supervised the auguring of 168 six inch holes in the deposit. Initially these were spaced three meters apart but as the area in which the cemetery was though to be located was approached the interval was changed to 1.5 meters. Based on the finding of shell artifacts the limits of the cemetery was determined to be about 4.5 by six meters (Johnson 1990). A row of augured holes were bored the long axis of the site and then numerous lines perpendicular to those were bored across the short axis of the site. This facilitated not only the location of the cemetery but the precise definition of the limits of the midden and the finding of a smaller auxiliary food processing area on the southeastern limits of the deposit. As a result of this testing program a proposal was submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers for the removal of the cemetery and the test excavation of the remainder of the midden.

Excavations began on Cemetery 2 on August 17, 1986 and continued until the middle of December. No field class was held during the fall semester. A trailer was put adjacent to the site and a member of the field crew lived there during the 16 hours when the excavators were absent and on Mondays and Tuesdays when no digging occurred the designated person spent all 24 hours at the site to guard the excavations and answer the questions of visitors. During the fall semester Professor Johnson taught his classes on Tuesdays through Thursdays and would leave CSUS on Thursday afternoon about 3:00 P.M. and arrive at CA-TEH-10 around 5:00 P.M. After viewing and discussing the Tuesday and Wednesday field work with the excavation crew they would leave for the Motel they were staying in and Professor Johnson would work at the site until midnight preparing burials for photography and removal the next day. Dr. Johnson stayed at the site in the trailer as the night watchmen Thursday through Sunday or Monday nights and then would drive back to Sacramento Monday night or early Tuesday mornings so that he could teach his classes. This schedule of working seven days a week persisted until everyone was glad to see the back filling of the excavations on December 14, 1986.

The second cemetery at CA-TEH-10 contained over 300 individuals which had been buried into the incredibly small space of 28 square meters. Associated with these interments were 27,877 artifacts which consisted mostly of shell beads and ornaments. Several multiple interments occurred, several individuals had been killed with arrows and spears, and the cemetery had been used between A.D. 1750 to about 1840. John Dougherty was the crew chief and supervised the excavation in the absence of Dr. Johnson. The laboratory work, specialized studies by consultants and analysis was spread out over four years. Reinterment of the remains and associated artifacts occurred in December of 1990 (Johnson 1990). {top of page}

In the Summer of 1986 during a trip to Carlsbad National Monument led to the discovery of a high elevation lithic scatter on the ridge above Cottonwood Cave.

The Spring field class again returned to continue the survey on the Hooper and Meeker Creek drainages in the Southern Cascades. An interesting group of sites were recorded that differed from earlier cultural resources identified on these creeks. On upper Hooper Creek two rock ring sites were located that were very large. One had 26 rock rings and the other 28. Some of the stacked rock walls separated blocks of "rooms" and were more square than round and were in rectangular blocks. The site with 26 rock rings was called affectionately by the students the "Yana Hilton" while the other became known by a name no longer recalled by the writer. Another site the got everyone excited was the 200 ground stone village. Situated at the intersection of main Meeker Creek and one of its northern branches this site had by far the most manos, metates, hopper mortars and pestles that have ever been seen on the surface of Southern Yana or Yahi village or campsite. Someday it is hoped that a transit and field crew will return to this site and make a detailed contour map. Also of interest was the presence of one midden clearly occurring on top of a portion of another. Soil chemical tests clearly show that the lower midden is older than the upper, thus it would be possible to test excavate each and determine a clear chronological separation between the artifacts contained in the two deposits, which is most often not possible at many sites.

A Summer Field School was held in 1987 at the Big Meadows Site in Eldorado National Forest (Maher 1993). David Wrobleski was the instructor and was assisted by Susan Wilcox and Star Hemstead, who directed the field laboratory. The excavations were an attempt to use block excavations to obtain types of data that had not been recovered from high elevation sites. A block of nine 2x2 meters units were divided into four 1x1 meter quadrants. The levels were ten centimeters thick and one of the quadrants was screened over 1/8 inch mesh screens while the other three were processed over 1/4 inch mesh. A substantial number of projectile points, ground stone, and other stone tools were recovered. In addition a significant amount of burned animal bone was also found. Bone has seldom been recovered from high elevation sites and the use of 1/8 inch screens led to its retention. Most of the deposit belongs to the Martis Culture and dates between 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. A unique slate object (Title Page)has yet to be assigned a function. Special studies indicates that obsidian used at the site was imported from the Bodie Hills location a long distance to the southeast and the basalt originated from sources as far as 30 miles away to the east. Locally derived cherts, vitric tuff, rhyolite, quartzite and other materials were apparently made into tools to be use at Big Meadows and then discarded when the camp was abandoned before winter set in.

Field work began again at CA-SAC-157 in the Fall of 1987 with a major change in excavation strategy. The large slide screen with a hopper for collecting dirt that had been used at CA-TEH-291 in the summer of 1984 was resurrected at CA-SAC-157. The owner of the property made arrangements for the use of a Bobcat Front Loader on Saturdays so that a large amount of the plow zone could be removed from Trench 32N. This trench was made two meters wide north-south and each unit was also two meters east-west. The intent was to remove the artifacts from a portion of the plow zone in the vicinity of the known cemetery. This was successful, but resulted in the acquisition of so much material that the laboratory crew was overwhelmed.

The Spring 1988 class test excavated CA-PLA-663/H and was under the supervision of Dr. Peggy Scully, Professor Johnson and Marianne Russo. This site was discovered when Peggy was recording a rock wall under contract to a local developer. The area had supposedly been previously surveyed for archaeological sites by a Bay Area firm with nothing noted. Dr. Scully observed some bedrock mortars and noted that the end of a projection of the edge of the Mehrten Formation seemed unusual. She and Marianne visited the area and found a pitted boulder petroglyph and what appeared to be a set of possible rock rings. Further examination revealed chipped stone. Permission to survey the general vicinity was obtained from the developers of Stanford Ranch and the firm that was going to build houses on what became the upper portion of CA-PLA-663/H Locas A. The area of the pitted boulder and possible rock rings were mapped and gridded off. Excavations of four of the rock rings, units around a bedrock mortar, the pitted boulder and one off site were started while Marianne and Peggy took groups of three or four students surveying. Almost immediately additional bedrock mortars were found along the edge of the Mehrten Formation and a historic pad and trail noted. Eventually a well developed midden and bedrock mortar (CA-PLA-663/H Locus B), and a scatter of manos, bowl mortar and metate fragments and chipped stone tools (CA-PLA-663/H Locus C) were found below Locus A. Excavations suggest that rather than rock rings their were at least five areas cleared of rocks so that structures of various activities could take place. A portable mortar was found in "Structure 1" with lithic debris, burned and unburned bone, and several projectile points found in the cleared areas, around and under the pitted boulder and bedrock mortar. No cultural debris was found in the off site unit. The materials from around the pitted boulder suggest it was affiliated with the Martis Culture while the cleared possible structure areas were affiliated with the Nisenan Maidu use of the area.

Starting in the 1988 no field classes were held in the fall again until in 1992. During the 1980s the local contract work done by the ASC diminished as a result of the Cottonwood and Black Butte Lake Projects until that by 1990 little activity occurred. The Spring 1989, 1990 and 1991 field classes returned to CA-SAC-157 under the supervision of Dr. Richard Hughes. Several areas away from the cemetery has still not been sampled so Professor Hughes used a random sample to choose some additional units to test. His field assistant in 1989 was Erik Wulf, in 1990 Steve Grantham and in 1991 Erik once again assisted. Erik worked at the site after the spring 1991 semester was over to insure that all of the units that had been started would be completed, since the field work at the CA-SAC-157 was to be terminated.

1990-1999 {top of page}

During the Spring of 1992 Dr. Johnson was on sabbatical leave and

Dr. Peggy Scully supervised the initial excavations at the Virginiatown Site in western Placer County. The class totally excavated Feature 1 a trash deposit, and began the investigation of Feature 2 and Area C, which were also refuse disposal areas. Dr. Scully has continued an interest in the Virginiatown work and is currently a dissertation advisor on Melissa Farcomb's committee at the University of Nevada, Reno. Professor Scully was assisted by Steve Moore and Eric Wulf.

In the Fall of 1992 Professor Johnson assumed direction of the field class again and was assisted by Dr. Goldfried, Melissa Farncomb and several other graduate students. The investigations were continued at Virginiatown with the excavation of Features 2 (trash deposit) and Feature 4 (rammed earth structure; Farncomb 1994).

In the Spring of 1993 the work continued at Virginiatown with the investigation of Features 2 and 4 and Areas A, B, and D. Professor Johnson took students surveying on Auburn Ravine to record prehistoric sites with Dr. Goldfried and Ms.Farncomb continuing the work at Virginiatown.

In the Fall of 1993 most of the effort was directed toward the investigation of the rapidly deteriorating rammed earth structure along Virginiatown Road with work continuing on Areas B and A (Figure 5). Areas E and F were also excavated. The eastern most Chinese Cemetery was also mapped (Map 15).

In the Spring of 1994 work was stopped on the rammed earth structure and focused on areas B, D and G and the partial exposure of the foundation at the Stone Store.

The Fall Semester of 1994 brought an intensive effort to complete the excavation of Area D, and the complete excavation of Area C was also accomplished. Work also began on a long narrow extension of Area B, called B1, that was dug into the hillside parallel to Area D and to its west.

Over Semester Break Mr. Matsuda discovered a basement pit between Feature 1 and Area G. His phone call resulted in its complete excavation by a volunteer crew under the supervision of Melissa Farncomb and Professor Johnson. This is now called Area L and yielded material quite different than that discovered elsewhere at Virginiatown. In January Mr. Matsuda found five more feature pits which are now labelled Areas M, N and O and features 3 and 4. The two features were small pits that were completely excavated and there contents brought back to the laboratory. At the beginning of the Spring semester 1995 it was the intent to completely excavate Areas M, N, O and B1. Mr. Matsuda also wanted Area G finished as well as anything else that needed to be done with Area B. Because of the over 48 inches of rainfall several Saturdays were rained out (Figure 1). The excavation of the above features was accomplished with volunteer crews under the supervision of Melissa Farncomb, Phil Smith and Dr.Johnson during the two week after memorial day. Each one of these features pits were completed and Mr. Matsuda has now levelled and begun landscaping the land. Between 1992 and 1995 graduate students Patrick McClary, Richard Deis, Julie Philf, Christina Savitsky, Floyd Hicks, and Phil Smith helped supervise students. Much of the success of the Virginiatown investigation is the direct result of the intense interest and hard work of Melissa Farncomb and the photography and advice of Dr. Goldfried.

Also in the Spring of 1995 Marianne Russo began working again on her thesis project in the Southern Cascade foothills. The intent is to complete her field work so that she can begin writing the thesis. Twelve days were spent in the field with Professor Johnson and two students from the Saturday Field Class and a graduate student volunteer. Students working with Ms. Russo will have the opportunity to participate in the rebirth of the Southern Cascades Project which will continue into the Summer and Fall.

As can be seen above the Department of Anthropology at CSUS has been very active in archaeological research since the inception of the field program in 1950. Large numbers of sites have been recorded and numerous excavations have been undertaken.  {top of page}

FACULTY WHO HAVE SUPERVISED ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT CSUS

Richard Reeve (Founder and First Chair of the Anthropology Department 1950-1965; Died 1967) Ph.D., English; Taught Field Class 1950-1954

Brigham Arnold (Professor Anthropology-Geography 1955-1958) Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California Berkeley; Taught Field Class 1955-1958

William J. Beeson (Professor Anthropology 1958-1986; Died 1990) Ph.D., Anthropology, University of Arizona; Taught Field Class 1958-1968, Summer Field Schools in Central California and at the Korosho Site in Arizona 1974-1978

Eugene Lutes (Lecturer) M.A., Anthropology; Taught Field Class Spring 1965

Richard E. Hughes (Professor of Anthropology 1989-1991) Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California Davis; Taught Field Class 1989-1991

Margaret (Peggy) Scully (Lecturer Spring 1992) Ph.D., Anthropology, University of California Berkeley; Taught Field Class Spring 1992, Co-Directed the Spring 1988 Class

GRADUATE STUDENTS WHO HAVE TAUGHT ARCHAEOLOGY AT CSUS

Patti Jo Palumbo (Lecturer of Anthropology) Summer Field School 1965

Marianne L. Russo (Assistant Professor of Anthropology) Summer Field School 1980 Summer Field School 1981, Co-Directed by Steven B. Dondero Summer Field School 1983

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