Chumash Relics at Development Site Tell of Long, Complex History

After sifting through the dust of the dry hills on the city’s western edge, archeologists can now read the history of a Chumash encampment there.

The shell fragments, drawn from shellfish found as far away as Malibu and Point Mugu, reveal a thriving trade network. The tools, shaped from condor bones, suggest healing rituals common to the Native American culture. The gradual changes in these tools tell archeologists that the Chumash used the site for centuries.

Now consultants are preparing to write a final report on the artifacts found at the site, where developers plan to build as many as 1,452 houses. The developers, Shapell Industries of Beverly Hills, plan to donate the artifacts to a local museum within a year.

William Clewlow, an archeological consultant who has studied some of the relics and may write the final report, said the artifacts reveal a site inhabited--off and on, perhaps--over thousands of years, an encampment whose landlocked people traded with Chumash villages on the coast. A site of such complexity and frequent use, he said, is a rare find.

“The most startling notion that has come from the Shapell property is we’re not just looking at a bunch of transient scroungers,” he said. “What we’re looking at is a very sophisticated system of resource exploitation and trade with other Chumash communities.”

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The artifacts, many of which have long since been removed from the land, were found scattered among 13 sites on the 1,860-acre Shapell property, once owned by the MGM film studio.

Artifacts were first discovered in 1969, and digging continued sporadically through last spring.

Four years ago, Indian activists and the local Sierra Club chapter sued the city and Shapell over the development project, claiming it would destroy the artifacts. The suit was dropped after Shapell agreed to preserve the find.

Since then, those involved in examining the find have tried to keep it quiet out of fear that vandals or artifact collectors would descend on the property. Richard Angulo, president of the California Indian Council Foundation and a consultant on the project, said pot-hunters have plundered other work sites in the county.

“It’s a problem,” he said. “People will start potting, and we didn’t want that to happen.”

Some collectors may have found the property anyway. Of the three tons of artifacts found there, Angulo said, roughly half are unaccounted for.

Researchers certainly found plenty worth plundering.

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“There was a surprisingly large variety of artifacts found,” Clewlow said. “There were things that men used, things that women used. . . . Sometimes when you’re investigating a site you find things relating only to ephemeral men’s activities like four guys out hunting deer.”

Included in the artifacts: mortars and paint mixing bowls with pigment still in them and condor-bone implements that Clewlow suspects were used in healing ceremonies.

Clewlow said he isn’t certain if the place was inhabited continuously but said it seemed very likely that people used the site for most of any given year.

Although most finds aren’t as large or complex, it is not unusual for development projects in the Conejo Valley to uncover Native American artifacts. The Stagecoach Inn Museum holds about 5,000 pieces from the Lang Ranch development alone.

“Literally, every freeway off-ramp, almost every shopping center, is over the remnants of prehistoric populations,” Clewlow said.

The Chumash presence in the Conejo Valley dates back at least 7,500 years, said T.J. Maxwell, a former anthropology professor at Cal Lutheran University. Traces of their tools and homes have been found under Wildwood elementary school, close to Cal Lutheran and near the Newbury Park Methodist Church.

Primarily gatherers, the Chumash collected local vegetation such as sage seeds and acorns for food, supplementing their diet with rabbits and other animals. The valley was abundant enough to support about 600 Chumash at any given time, Maxwell said.

They also had an extensive trade network, using disc beads made from shells as money, Maxwell said. The Shapell Industries site yielded the remains of shellfish known to live near Point Mugu and Malibu, suggesting trade with those areas, Clewlow said.

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“When I went to school, they were [considered] one of the most primitive people in the world, but now we know they were very sophisticated,” Maxwell said. “They had a money system, they had a representative political system, they had excellent rock art and one of the best seagoing boats in North America.”

Although some of the first artifacts retrieved from the Shapell property have found their way into archeological literature, Clewlow said, some are still under analysis. Most are in storage, their location kept secret to protect them from collectors.

Last week, Shapell representatives met with Clewlow and Angulo to discuss the final study. After the study is complete, the company will donate the artifacts to the Stagecoach Inn Museum, hopefully within the year.

Angulo said it was important the relics go on display, both to teach area residents about the Conejo Valley’s heritage and show them the kind of artifacts that are constantly being destroyed or buried by development.

“Artifacts have been destroyed since the city became a city,” he said. “We need to teach the kids how the Chumash lived.”