Facts of O.C. Prehistory May Be Buried Forever

NEWPORT BEACH — Nothing prepared the diggers for the strange and beautiful artifacts--the beads, mysterious stone spheres and decorated clay cylinders--buried in the bluff top above Newport Bay.

Then they started unearthing bones. Hundreds of human bones. Arm bones. Leg bones. Teeth. Bone fragments. Parts of human skulls.

Still, the excavation crews pushed on, quietly dismantling--some say destroying--one of the oldest and most important archeological sites on the California coast. Week after week, during late 1995 and early 1996, archeological field workers for an Irvine Co. project dug up the bones, which were later reburied in trenches nearby, to make room for 149 luxury homes.

From accounts of the Irvine Co.’s archeologist and others who worked at the site just off Jamboree Road, the bluff top teemed with clues to life along the Pacific coast 4,000 to 9,500 years ago, at the close of the Ice Age.

“We kept walking around, saying, ‘Where is the Smithsonian? Where is National Geographic?’ ” recalled one archeological worker who agreed to talk on condition that he not be named. “It was a fantastic, amazing story. Sad situation. Sad story. I guess money talks.”

A pricey, gated community called Harbor Cove now sits atop the bluff that once cradled the remains of a village believed to be thousands of years older than the fabled Egyptian pyramids of Giza.

And virtually no one outside Irvine Co. officials and a small circle of archeologists, field workers and Native Americans knows what really emerged from this site, called ORA-64. Rumors spread among the local Native American community that hundreds of prehistoric human remains were unexpectedly unearthed. A forensic expert estimated that the site contained as many as 600 burials.

The age of the bones may never be known because they were reburied without radiocarbon dating at the request of two state-appointed Native Americans called “most likely descendants” overseeing the site, Irvine Co. officials say.

What is clear is this: An ancient site long considered by archeologists as highly significant was excavated, then developed with little public awareness, even after years of behind-the-scenes lobbying by some scientists to save it, according to an extensive Times review of dozens of state and local documents and more than 100 interviews.

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The saga of ORA-64--so named because it was the 64th site in Orange County on a national list of archeological finds--offers a rare glimpse into a world where the interests of developers, archeologists and Native Americans clash over tangled questions of how to balance modern-day progress with cultural and scientific concerns. While the excavation of prehistoric sites is not unusual in Southern California, the ORA-64 story stands out because of the site’s established scientific value and the debate that has ensued over how the burials were handled.

The Irvine Co. and the state Native American Heritage Commission, which oversees the handling of Indian remains, insist that ORA-64 was developed in strict accordance with state and local laws.

“This company has spent more than $2 million seeking to develop that site, but to do it in a way that is sensitive to whatever was there in terms of prehistory--in terms of removing it, cataloging it, analyzing it, sharing the results with the public,” said Larry Thomas, the Irvine Co.’s senior vice president for communications. “That’s hardly a destruction of a site.”

Thomas added that the company tried to protect the site from “Indiana Jones” types hunting for buried treasure.

“You have an obligation not to identify specific places . . .” he said. “We have not sought to create any greater interest in this than already existed, but to try to explain what we were doing as we were going along.”

Thousands of artifacts from the site remain in laboratories and in storage, and the Irvine Co. has promised a full public accounting of what was discovered. The report has been delayed for months because of the wealth of data.

Even so, some Native Americans and scientists argue that the site was so important that it should have been preserved. Some contend that state laws intended to protect sites from scavengers can instead unintentionally allow their destruction by development, by keeping locations secret. It was, according to one official attached to the state Office of Historic Preservation, “a failure of the system.”

“They say that everything that was done was legal. Well, it may be legal, but it isn’t right,” said Lillian Robles, an elder with the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians and a critic of the digging at ORA-64. “If it’s so legal, why was everyone so hush-hush?”

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Michael E. Macko, the consulting archeologist for the Irvine Co. who oversaw the excavation of ORA-64, based his estimate that the site was occupied roughly 4,000 to 9,500 years ago on radiocarbon dating of shells that appear to have been the kitchen waste of the inhabitants who sought food from the coastline.

Fewer than 10 archeological sites along the California coast date back more than 9,000 years, and ORA-64 was one of the largest, said Jon M. Erlandson, a leading expert in early coastal life who has reviewed data from the site.

“This is one of the most impressive and important sites from the Pacific coast of North America,” said Erlandson, a University of Oregon associate professor of anthropology who is assisting on ORA-64 research.

The excavation could produce important new details about California’s past, such as the impact of climate changes and types of vegetation, as well as trade and social patterns of the early inhabitants, say archeologists familiar with the site.

The prehistoric dwellers left behind a wealth of artifacts--thousands of them, Macko says, including many hundreds that he considers of museum quality.

There are the perfectly round stone balls, 50 to 60 in all, some the size of baseballs, two as big as bowling balls. Similar balls have been found elsewhere in California, in Oregon and eastward--but the sheer numbers at ORA-64 make the find important, Macko says. He hypothesizes that they were used for sports.

There are 30 thimble-sized, decorated clay cylinders seemingly fired at high temperatures. A 1971 discovery of similar objects during an earlier dig at ORA-64 led to published scientific reports that they were the oldest known decorated, fired-clay ceramics in the Western Hemisphere.

And there are the four stone bifaces--stone artifacts shaped like large arrowheads and flaked on either side--20 to 30 centimeters long. One is made of a natural volcanic glass called obsidian traced to an area on the eastern Oregon-California border, Macko says.

How the obsidian traveled across the mountains and valleys of what is now California to be buried above Newport Bay “is one of the most fascinating research questions that we have,” Macko said.

Missing from this treasure trove are the artifacts found with the burials. Those were returned to the earth along with the bones during 11 reburials from August 1995 to January 1997. Native Americans associated with the project performed the ceremonies.

Without the bones, some scientists say, huge amounts of knowledge about the early people who made these artifacts is lost. But the appointed Native American overseers--Jim Velasques and David Belardes--opposed any chemical testing of bone, the Irvine Co. says. And they also asked for secrecy.

“I signed an agreement with them that said no information on human remains would be distributed without their approval. And I don’t plan on violating that agreement,” Macko said.

Belardes, a leader of the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians, said he opposed any bone examination that would be destructive, such as radiocarbon dating or DNA testing.

Velasques, tribal chair of the Coastal Gabrielino/Diegueno band of Mission Indians, confirmed that he had requested secrecy at the site, and said the Irvine Co. treated the remains with dignity.

“From what I saw, to me it was better that [the remains] be exhumed and buried in a better place than they be bulldozed over,” he said.

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Under state law, when human remains are found at a construction site, the county coroner must determine whether they are recent or ancient. At ORA-64, that job fell to coroner’s consultant Judy Suchey, a nationally recognized forensic anthropologist who--when questioned by reporters last spring--said that approximately 600 or more remains had been uncovered.

Irvine Co. officials questioned how Suchey had reached that count. Thomas, the company spokesman, said at the time that only three full skeletons and hundreds of bone fragments had been discovered. Any count is difficult because most bone was found not as full skeletons, but fragmented, scattered and disturbed by rodents, Macko said. In later interviews, however, Thomas said that Suchey’s estimate of 600 might be correct.

“It could be,” he said. “It could be more. It could be less. But we don’t know how she reached that conclusion.”

Suchey, an anthropology professor at Cal State Fullerton, said she based her estimate on the bones she saw in the field and in a laboratory, where they were briefly held before reburial, as well as conversations she had with people at the site.

With the permission of the coroner’s office, The Times reviewed nearly 200 of the 4,000 photographic slides Suchey says she collected of the burials. They show portions of tibias and femurs, plastic bags filled with bone fragments, even an upper jaw with 12 teeth. Slides dated Nov. 16, 1995, show what appear to be four partially excavated burials still in the ground.

However, a request by The Times to reproduce photographs of the bones was denied by the coroner’s office at the request of the Native American Heritage Commission.

Macko says Suchey’s estimate is probably on target. One worker, who requested anonymity, said he helped dig up at least a dozen skeletons that were 30% to 80% complete.

Some workers said many remains turned up after heavy equipment arrived at the site in 1995, systematically removing thin layers of soil to reveal bones and other objects underneath.

“Bones turned up everywhere,” one worker recalled. “You could see a cranium that had just been sheared in half by the scraper--bones that were crushed by the scraper.”

Macko, however, denies that extensive damage occurred. “Most things were recovered with absolutely no damage,” he said.

First workers excavated the site, digging roughly 1,900 one-by-one-meter squares in the ground, Macko said. Paddle-wheel scrapers removed one to two inches of soil at a time to assure objects were unearthed before grading began, he said. When remains were found, scraping was halted and bones were removed by hand, he said.

The scraper’s accuracy was “mind-boggling,” Macko said.

According to Erlandson, the ORA-64 excavation was handled properly. The standard routine, he said, would have been to dig a small percentage of a site and bulldoze the rest.

“This was much better than the average project,” he said. Still, he added, he wishes the site could have been saved from development.

Some archeological workers questioned the wisdom of hiring a handful of state prison inmates from two halfway houses to work on the ORA-64 site. Macko said the inmates were doing manual labor such as washing material and repairing screens, not excavation.

“I saw no reason not to give these guys a chance at all,” he said.

More study of the artifacts and other scientific review remain. But Macko is scheduled to speak about the site Thursday at the Pacific Coast Archeological Society, which already is stirring fresh curiosity among local archeologists.

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Although ORA-64’s final excavation attracted little public attention, a much smaller dig generated a flurry of coverage in January 1973, when scientists reported the unearthing of thimble-sized, decorated, fired-clay ceramics believed to be 6,000 to 7,150 years old.

Archeologist Christopher Drover--who discovered the ceramics--later applied to nominate ORA-64 to the National Register of Historic Places.

State records show that the state Historical Resources Commission approved Drover’s request in July 1977, a step that some officials say can virtually assure a place on the National Register. But the final paperwork apparently was never signed in Sacramento or forwarded to the National Register in Washington. Consequently, the site was never listed. (While National Register status does not in itself block development of a historic site, it sometimes can prompt more thorough federal scrutiny of a private project and more public awareness of a site’s importance.)

Other experts sought to save part or all the site. One consulting archeologist, Joan Brown, urged in a 1992 report for the city of Newport Beach that ORA-64 be preserved. “This is one of the most important prehistoric site[s] remaining in Orange County,” Brown wrote. Her report, part of an environmental review process for the proposed Harbor Cove development, was deemed confidential under state law because it contained site locations.

The following year, conservationists in Newport Beach attempted to drum up support and money to buy the ORA-64 land and two other Irvine Co. properties above Newport Bay. The campaign focused on environmental concerns, not archeology, and voters turned down Measure A in November 1993 by a 2-to-1 ratio.

“If people thought it was so significant archeologically that it should have been untouched, there was an opportunity to purchase it from us, and we were a willing seller,” Thomas of the Irvine Co,. said.

The Irvine Co. then pressed ahead with the Harbor Cove project, receiving approval from the Newport Beach City Council and the California Coastal Commission, which reviewed the company’s archeological plans. Excavation work at ORA-64 began Jan. 19, 1995, finishing a year behind schedule in May 1996.

In a last-ditch effort for preservation, Jonathon E. Ericson, a UC Irvine professor of environmental analysis, design and anthropology, wrote Irvine Co. President Donald L. Bren in May 1995, urging at least partial preservation of what he called “perhaps one of the most important sites of its type in North America and the world.” Ericson said he never heard back from Bren.

Some archeologists still wonder whether government review should have assured ORA-64’s preservation, much as it might protect a wetlands or a rare songbird.

The California Environmental Quality Act requires the study of whether a project might significantly damage an important archeological site. It strongly encourages site preservation, but if that proves impossible, the site is supposed to be excavated so that its information is recovered and saved--such as retrieving artifacts and studying them.

Some wonder if the ORA-64 excavation illustrates a flaw in the act.

“If they can’t protect a site of that importance, then [CEQA is] not doing what it’s supposed to do,” said Patricia Martz, associate professor of anthropology and archeology at Cal State Los Angeles and former chairwoman of the state Historical Resources Commission.

“It was a failure of CEQA and local government to deal appropriately with a valuable environmental resource,” said William Seidel, coordinator of the state’s Historical Resources Information System, which keeps track of archeological sites and other historic places for the state Office of Historic Preservation. “I think it was a failure of the system.”

Today, as they did thousands of years ago, people are settling in at the bluff top above Newport Bay.

Nearly all the houses at Harbor Cove are finished--large, big-windowed homes, some with Spanish-style red-tile roofs, some with New England-style gray stone details and coach lights. Mercedes Benzes, BMWs and Lexuses are parked in the driveways. Landscapers have planted flowers and trees.

Robles, the tribal elder of the Juaneno band of Mission Indians, wonders how much Harbor Cove residents know about the people who came before them.

“When it’s winter, and the doors start slamming, and they hear footsteps,” she said, “they will know the ancestors are around.”

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Deborah Schoch can be reached at (714) 966-5813 or by e-mail at [email protected]

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Ancient Find

The excavation of an Upper Newport Bay bluff top to build housing in 1995 and 1996 yielded artifacts that could date back 4,000 to 9,500 years. Found at the Harbor Cove site:

* Graves: Possibly as many as 600 burials uncovered, with many found in a cemetery-like area.

* Ceramic cylinders: 30 small tapered objects, perhaps used in religious ceremony.

* Stone spheres: 50 to 60 perfectly shaped balls ranging from baseball-size to bowling ball-size.

* Bone beads: Hundreds of intricately designed beads carved from rabbit bone.

* Bifaces: Four dual-faced pieces, 20 to 30 centimeters long; possibly denoted status within the settlement. One biface is made of obsidian traced to a site on the eastern California-Oregon border.

Source: Macko Inc.; Researched by APRIL JACKSON / Los Angeles Times