From the sandy depths of their excavations, the diggers have brought up bones and tools. They have found tiny decorative beads and complete dwellings.
But a Cal State Northridge archeological project on San Clemente Island is unearthing more than artifacts. It is uncovering a prehistoric Indian culture that may provide clues to how and when the first humans lived in California.
Under the direction of anthropologist Mark Raab, the Cal State Northridge excavation project on San Clemente--about 48 miles off the coast--has progressed for nearly five years. Crews of archeology and anthropology students work weekly shifts on the federally owned island, and their findings--items dating back nearly 10,000 years to the Ice Age--may help change long-held notions about prehistoric life.
Raab said the archeological evidence indicates that prehistoric Californians were on the Channel Islands, living off the sea, at the same time their counterparts were hunting mammoths and other big game on the North American mainland.
"What we are finding is that some of the first inhabitants of the New World were stalking nothing more dramatic than shellfish, as opposed to mammoths," Raab said. "If that's true, it means a whole new chapter in the peopling of the New World will have to be written along those lines."
San Clemente, the southernmost of the eight Channel Islands, has a land surface of about 57 square miles and has been controlled by the Navy since 1934. A bombing target for decades, only about 10% of the island is still used by the Navy, including two square miles for missile testing. The rest remains natural environment, said Jan Larson, natural resources manager for the North Island Naval Air Station in San Diego, which manages the island.
The Indians are long gone from San Clemente, having left the island by 1829, according to records found in the Spanish missions.
However, much about the Indians--possibly related to the Gabrielinos who settled the Los Angeles Basin--remains in the island's rich archeological deposits.
Under a federal mandate to preserve archeological sites on its properties, the Navy approached archeologists at UCLA and Cal State Northridge and entered into cooperative agreements to allow long-term study of the island. The Navy provides the researchers with housing, food and the aircraft that fly them there and back.
