Early Work in the San Francisco Bay Area

Midden deposits containing shell in close proximity to the former bayshore characterize nearly all identified San Francisco Bay area prehistoric archaeological sites. These shell mounds contain evidence for environmental influences on bay area prehistoric human land use, specific subsistence practice, and alterations in those practices in response to environmental fluctuations. Due to rises in sea levels, bayshore sites may extend below present sea level; and marshes, shellfish beds and even human remains lie buried in relation to former shorelines (Bickel 1978:10-11).

Early San Francisco Bay area archaeological field studies were conducted mostly on the eastern, southern, and northern bay shores, and while there have been important contributions to methodological and regional research development, pioneer investigators focused primarily on building a body of data. M. Uhle's 1902 work at the Emeryville shell mound was the first to recognize cultural change in Bay Area prehistory, a notion that was rejected by many researchers until the 1920s (Moratto 1984:228-229). Between 1906 and 1908, Nelson excavated the Ellis Landing site corroborating Uhle's findings. At the same time, Nelson conducted the first intensive survey of San Francisco Bay and open coast north to Fort Ross and south to Monterey Bay (Nelson 1909). He enumerated over 400 "shell heaps, earth mounds, and a few minor localities that cannot be termed anything but temporary camp sites" (1909:310). Eighteen sites Nelson (n.d.) identified and mapped are within San Francisco County.

Archaeological excavations at San Francisco bayshore sites recovered evidence of long-term occupation (Nelson 1910b) and year-round use occurred over a long period of time (e.g., up to 3,500 years at Ellis Landing [Nelson 1910b]), these early stratigraphic studies led to the investigation of cultural change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and eventually to the development of the Cultural California Taxonomic Systems.

In contrast to the broadly sloping eastern bayshore, where shell mounds have remained visible and have stirred interest since the 1850s, archaeological sites are less visible on the heavily urbanized peninsula, which is dominated by high hills, ridges, and rocky cliffs. Nonetheless, of the 26 known sites on the San Francisco peninsula north of the San Bruno Mountains, 16 have yielded cultural materials and/or human skeletal remains, Rudo's 1982 Master's thesis summarizes not only archaeological studies within San Francisco County, but also includes newspaper and journal reports as well as an accounting of avocationalists' finds since the 1850s.

North San Francisco Peninsula Archaeology

The first San Francisco peninsula archaeological excavation was conducted in 1910. N.C. Nelson systematically excavated the largest (SFR-7) of the 10-12 Bayshore, or Crocker, mounds near Johnson's Landing (Nelson 1910a). L.L. Loud (1912a) also excavated several bay area shellmounds including, in 1912, one San Francisco peninsula site (CA-SFR-6) near the Palace of Fine Arts. Nelson's Bayshore mounds excavation records, as well as those concerning Loud's investigations, on file at the Pheobe Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, remain unpublished manuscripts (Nelson 1910a; Loud 1912a). Moratto remarks that, in the intervening "70 years, no one has excavated more [volume] than did Nelson in 1910...or Loud in 1912" (1984:267).

San Francisco peninsula human skeletal remains and/or associated organic materials and gravels provide the oldest established dates for human presence in the Bay Area. On the western bayshore, between the peninsula tip and the head of the southern bay arm, human skeletal material has been radiocarbon dated from 2,400 to 5,000 B.P. (Bickel 1978a:10, 1978b; Henn et al. 1972:209; Moratto 1984:266-267). Table 3 lists western bayshore sites yielding evidence of human presence resulting in radiocarbon determinations older than 2,400 years and the depths of these dated materials below present ground.

Several more recent excavations were conducted on the peninsula (S. Baker 1978; Holman et al. 1977; Moratto and Hegler 1972) and, specifically, within several blocks of the projects area (Pastron and Walsh 1988a, 1988b). These studies, along with the Nelson (1910a) and Loud (1912a) excavations and materials recovered by 19th-century avocationalists have resulted in curated collections of a variety of cultural materials. In summary, formed lithic and bone tools, lithic flaking debris, charmstones, perforated mica ornaments, Olivella beads, Haliotis ornaments, mortars and grounds, cooking stones and heat-affected rock have been recovered. Four sites (SFR-2, 112, 113, and 114) within or near the current project area, yielded imported materials such as obsidian, quartz crystals, mica, and ochre. Site excavation details, including depth below present ground surface and a summary of recovered material, are presented in Table 3. All sites contained dietary remains except for CA-SFR-26, which consisted of human remains and a single artifact (Moratto 1984:267).

Table: Radiocarbon Results from West Bayshore Sites (from Bickel 1978; Henn et al. 1972; 
and Moratto 1984)
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Site            C-14 date               Depth           Associated Tools

BART Site       4900+/-250 BP           22.9 m          none
(CA-SFR-28)     (organic material)

Sunnyvale       4460+/-95 BP            unknown         none

Stanford Man 1  3-4000 BP               6.1 m           none

Stanford Man 2  2450+/-270 BP           5.2 m           3 large side-notched
                2400+/-125 BP                           expanding stem points
                (bone collagen)

Read detailed Research Design, Recommendations, and Bibliography from ACS (1994).

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