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.
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