Ancient bones found at UCSD
By Tanya Sierra
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

January 27, 2008

Locked away in a museum safe near Escondido are perhaps the oldest skeletal
remains found in the Western Hemisphere.

More than 30 years after the relics were unearthed during a classroom
archaeological dig at UC San Diego, the county's Kumeyaay tribes are
fighting to reclaim the bones that anthropologists estimate are nearly
10,000 years old.

OVERVIEW

Background: What may be the oldest skeletal remains found in the Western
Hemisphere were discovered during a classroom archaeological dig on UCSD
property in 1976. Kumeyaay Indians are trying to have the relics returned.

What's changing: The Kumeyaay and a UC San Diego committee met last week to
discuss the issue and lay out benchmarks the tribes would have to meet to
have the remains repatriated.

The future: If the Kumeyaay can prove the remains belong to their ancestors,
federal law says the bones must be returned.
"We think it's the oldest multiple burial in the New World," said UCLA
anthropology professor Gail Kennedy, who participated in the 1976 dig with a
University of California San Diego professor. "We don't know anything about
these people other than they lived on the coast and they were fishermen."

The remains, which a UC consultant says have been dated between 9,590 and
9,920 years old, make them older than Kennewick Man - skeletal remains found
on the banks of the Columbia River in 1996. That collection, which is at the
center of a years-long legal battle between American Indian tribes and
archaeologists - dates back 9,300 years, scientists say.

Kennewick Man now rests in The Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture
in Washington state while the case is being litigated.

The Kumeyaay don't care how old the remains are. They simply want to put
what they say are their ancestors to rest.

Getting in the way, they say, are garrulous explanations and bureaucracy.

The Kumeyaay also are at odds with UCSD over its plan to tear down
University House and replace it with a new one. Tribes say it would further
disturb their ancestors' burial ground.

According to members of the Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee, which
was created in 1998, about 29 remains were excavated in 1976 near University
House, a home for the UCSD chancellor. Only three, in the safe near
Escondido, are accounted for.

"We would like to bury those remains," said Steve Banegas, chairman of the
Kumeyaay Cultural Repatriation Committee. "We no longer want them 
disrespected.

The odyssey
Although the intact skeletons are being stored only 30 miles from where they
were found, the bones have twice been shipped across the country - in the
same kind of boxes that hold frozen chicken in a grocery store, an Indian
lawyer says - and have been stored in two San Diego County museums.

In 1976, anthropologists took a class to University House to participate in
a dig, knowing skeletons had been dug up from the area in the past.

They were amazed at what they found, Kennedy said.

A young man and an older woman were buried together. He was placed at her
feet. Two of his fingers were severed and put in his mouth. Both of their
skulls were cracked. The condition of the third skeleton was not as good.

Kennedy does not know what the severed fingers denoted but said some
cultures amputate fingers as part of a ceremony.

Kennedy said she took the remains to UCLA, where she examined them for a
year before giving them back to UCSD. Many details of where the bones have
been for the past 32 years are missing.

In the past decade, they were sent to Balboa Park's Museum of Man before
going to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2007.

They were sent back to the Museum of Man last year, then to the San Diego
Archaeological Center near the San Diego Wild Animal Park, said Courtney
Coyle, an attorney who represents a member of the repatriation committee.

The archaeological center is a museum and repository that was founded to
care for collections that have never been curated after excavation, said
Cindy Stankowski, the center's director.

The frequent moves have compromised the integrity of the remains, said
Bernice Paipa, a delegate for the La Posta Band of Mission Indians.

"When we looked at the bones, they had some type of varnish on them," she
said. "They weren't even in curation boxes. They were in bubble wrap, and
when they were being unrolled, one fell out and it hit the floor."

Representatives from the Museum of Man and the Smithsonian did not return
repeated phone calls.

Process of repatriation
About 20 delegates of various tribes from the Kumeyaay Nation, whose
historical territory extended from San Diego and Imperial counties to 60
miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border, met Thursday with a university
committee at the Barona Indian Reservation to reiterate their demands and
learn why the parties responsible for the remains haven't turned them over 
yet.

It's not a simple process.

The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires
museums and federal agencies to return remains and artifacts to federally
recognized tribes that request them.

Last April a UCSD committee was created to determine whether the remains are
Kumeyaay. Margaret Schoeninger, a UCSD anthropology professor, is in charge
of the group.

Bones can't be returned until Schoeninger's group tells a systemwide
university repatriation committee whether it believes the remains are
Kumeyaay. To do that, the university committee needs to meet certain
standards of proof.

The Kumeyaay say they can prove their link to the remains but are insulted
they are even being asked. The nation says it has been here since the
beginning of time and the remains could not have belonged to any other 
people.

"I don't know what else we can prove short of someone rising from the ground
or coming back from the dead and saying, 'Yes, these are my relatives,' "
Banegas told Schoeninger at the meeting.

The tribes gave a presentation outlining their centuries-long ties to the
area, including maps and historic songs and poems referring to the La Jolla
area.

"I know what you have here is what you firmly believe in," Schoeninger said
to Banegas, "but I need proof."

The Kumeyaay committee has recovered 20 remains since it was formed. Dealing
with UCSD has been the most difficult, Paipa said.

"We've never had this big of a problem," she said. "We've even collected
(remains) from the Smithsonian and it was not a big problem."

The fight here is reminiscent of a battle in the Bay Area, where American
Indians are trying to reclaim thousands of remains stored under the Hearst
Gymnasium swimming pool at UC Berkeley. The remains are part of the
University of California system's Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology.

Schoeninger said she hopes to have a committee recommendation by March. The
issue would then go before the UC system's repatriation committee. That
committee would forward the matter to university Provost Rory Hume, who has
the ultimate say.

"I can understand why they're frustrated," Schoeninger said. "They just want
their remains back."