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California: Emeryville Shellmound, San Francisco Bay Area
Although Alfred Kroeber was less interested in the archaeology of California, the local shellmounds were major sites of collection during the museum's early years. Over more than 4,000 years, the Native peoples of the region had created huge shell middens. As these sites were threatened with development, UC anthropologists such as Max Uhle (in-between his Peruvian expeditions) and graduate student Nels Nelson applied innovative techniques of stratigraphy in order to establish relative chronologies. By far the largest of these sites was the mound at Emeryville (ca. 975 x 325 feet, 32 feet deep). Officially designated as Ala-309, the site was the subject of continual UC research through the 1950s.
Southern wall of the Emeryville Shellmound, as it was being leveled to build a paint factory. Photograph by W. E. Schenck and L. L. Loud, 1924 (15-7792).
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