<< Our Photo Pages >> Bolsa Chica Mesa - Ancient Village or Settlement in United States in The West

Submitted by bat400 on Monday, 10 August 2009  Page Views: 31023

Site WatchSite Name: Bolsa Chica Mesa Alternative Name: ORA 83
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 14.978 km away from the location you searched for.
Region: The West Type: Ancient Village or Settlement
Nearest Town: Huntington Beach, CA
Latitude: 33.708200N  Longitude: 118.0463W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
 1 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
 no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
 no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
 4

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The Field Museum
The Field Museum submitted by bat400 : "Cogged" stone from the Boca Chica site in southern California. Part of "The Ancient Americas" exhibit, in the gallery on hunter gatherer cultures. Photo by bat400, March 2009. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Ancient Village in Orange County, California.
A settlement site dating to 8000 years ago (Early Holocene,) Bolsa Chica is one of over 20 archaeological sites in southern California found on mesas overlooking the sea or coastal wetlands. Bolsa Chico is one of only two sites in the Americas where cogged stones (shaped, flat, circular stones with lobes or "teeth") appear to have been manufactured.

There appear to have been few modern, formal surveys or excavations of the site, but artifact finds and surveys indicate a village site and burial ground. There are numerous shell middens on the mesa. This in one of the last remaining open areas overlooking the coast in the southern portion of the greater Los Angeles area and lies immediately inland from the Bolsa Cicha Ecological Reserve.

Over a thousand of the unusual cogged stones have been found on the mesa; few have been found in the surrounding area leading several researchers to conclude that the artifacts were made here. Showing no wear, the stones are assumed to have been a ceremonial item and not a practical tool.

The location given is general. The actual site is located on private land, inaccessible to the general public, and has been also constantly under threat of development for since 2000. The Bolsa Chica Land Trust has attempted to protect both the wetlands and this site. Their website includes a page on the cogged stone site, including photos.

[Information from the websites linked, and
The Cogged Stones of Southern California, Hal Eberhart, American Antiquity, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jan., 1961), and
Correlations between Archaic Cultures of Southern California and Coquimbo, Chile, Jorge Iribarren Ch. American Antiquity, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Jan., 1962).]


Note: Ancient burial ground gets national designation. But is it too late? See comment.
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Wilson's warbler
Ruddy Duck
Elegant Tern (Thalasseus elegans)1 041425

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"Bolsa Chica Mesa" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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Re: Ancient burial ground gets national designation by Anonymous on Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Professor Martz, Ms. Horgan, the many members of the Gabrieleno/Tongva and Juaneño/Acjachamen and the Bolsa Chica Land Trust are to be commended for their hard work in bringing this before the Keeper of the National Register. One error in these articles must be corrected. The Bolsa Chica Conservancy has never advocated for the preservation of this site and in fact many of their board members have advocated construction of housing over the site, including Mr. Mountford who is identified above as senior vice president of the firm that destroyed and desecrated a major portion of Ora 83. It is the BOLSA CHICA LAND TRUST that has worked to preserve the site, to whose web site a link is provided above. Please correct this. Thank you.
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Ancient burial ground gets national designation by bat400 on Monday, 10 August 2009
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Submitted by coldrum ---

'Cogged stone' site at Bolsa Chica Mesa listed as eligible with the National Register of Historic Places.

A site that is widely regarded as an ancient American Indian burial ground at the Bolsa Chica Mesa has received national historic designation, exciting preservationists who say the move grants the area slightly more protection against future development.
Federal officials last month determined the “cogged stone” site at Bolsa Chica as eligible for listing with the National Register of Historic Places. The area was named after the hundreds of carved stone disks – cogged stones – found on the site. The disks were possibly used for sacred rituals.

“We value the property as a significant resource,” said National Register of Historic Places historian Paul Lusignan. “There was a tremendous amount of information about the prehistoric site and distinction for the fact that it has the cogged stone site, which is a unique archeological feature found in very few other locations.”
The designation makes the cogged stone site the only archeological spot along the Orange County coast to receive such an honor. The area captures some of the land within the Hearthside Homes development and an estimated six acres of unincorporated land owned by Don Goodell that the city of Huntington Beach is proposing to annex.

Only four other archeological sites in the county have received the distinction.
The honor is just the latest chapter in a decades-long battle among preservationists, tribal members and developers.

In 2008, tensions reignited after an announcement about the unearthing of 174 ancient American Indian remains, half of them found over an 18-month period on a site slated to become a community with more than 300 homes. The land was once shared by the Juaneno Band of Mission Indians and the Gabrieleno-Tongva.

The discovery of hundreds of mysterious cogged stones and human bone fragments that are up to 8,500 years old confirmed the decades-long rumors that the Brightwater Hearthside Homes site was an ancient burial ground of international importance, Native American officials have said.

The site would have ultimately been listed with the National Register of Historic Places. However, the land owners -- Hearthside Homes and Goodell -- opposed the official listing, Lusignan said.
Ed Mountford, senior vice president of Hearthside Homes, did not say in a written statement why they opposed the listing. He said they did not have more information to change their position at this time.

Regardless, the listing is simply a technicality, Lusignan explained. The eligible status still affords the area the same protection as an official listing.
While the national designation is more of an honorary distinction, he said it carries a lot of weight, enough to be taken into consideration during environmental reviews.

In addition, the designation makes it much harder for local governments to issue a “mitigated negative declaration.” The issuance declares that a project does not have enough of an environmental impact to warrant an in-depth study. The new historic designation changes some things for the cogged stone site, which is largely in the process of being developed.

It deems the site a significant resource and therefore does not allow the city to skip an environmental impact report for development, said Susan Stratton, an archeologist who supervises a team at the California Office of Historic Preservation.
“I don’t see how you can mitigate for this,” Stratton said. “In this case you have an archeological site and it’s a non-renewable resource so whatever remains of this particular site, it’s forever. It will never be duplicated. You can’t build a replica of this.”


NO EFFECT ON HEARTHSIDE HOMES

As for Hearthside Homes?
Martz says it’s too late.

“Unfortunately that site has been almo

Read the rest of this post...
[ Reply to This ]

Will California beach homes sit on ancient burial ground? by bat400 on Sunday, 02 March 2008
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Originally submitted by coldrum ---

Archaeologists have unearthed 174 ancient American Indian remains, half of them found over the past 18 months on a site at Bolsa Chica Mesa slated to become a residential community, according to California Native American Heritage Commission officials.

The discovery of hundreds of mysterious cogged stones and now human bone fragments that are up to 8,500 years old confirms decades-long rumors that the Brightwater Hearthside Homes site is an ancient burial ground of international importance, said Dave Singleton, a program analyst with the Native American Heritage Commission.

The land was once shared by the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians and Gabrieleno-Tongva, Singleton said. In addition, he said, the site was possibly a ceremonial area. The 400 cogged stones found in and around the site are considered ceremonial objects by both tribes and were buried with the deceased, he said.

Since the 1970s, activists and tribal members have pushed for preservation of the site that they said belonged to an ancient Indian village.

After a flurry of lawsuits and heated disputes over a plan to build more than 300 homes on the site, developer Hearthside Homes won permission to build as long as any discovered remains were reinterred elsewhere in the area. Archaeologists have worked at the location for decades, but details about the scope of the find haven't emerged until now.

About eight years ago, Hearthside Homes acknowledged isolated findings of American Indian remains on the site but didn't file a summary report about the last 87 bone fragments until November. Human remains can mean whole sets or a single fragment belonging to a person. The report, filed with the commission, was written by Nancy Wiley, the lead archeologist who works for the developer.

Flossie Horgan, executive director of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust, said the developer should have made the findings public when the large numbers of bone fragments surfaced.

She called the lack of disclosure a "cover-up" and said the development's future may have been different if the California Coastal Commission had known the significance of the site.

Read more at the OCRegister.
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