![]() Officials, he said, “don’t want any Joe Blow Indiana Joneses out there” hunting for artifacts. The information will be available only to certified archaeologists, Carithers said. ![]() The architects and tribal monitors will, at the conclusion of the cleanup, file reports on the surveyed properties and found artifacts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said. Carithers declined to say how many artifacts have been found, asserting the information is not public record. Since the debris cleanup efforts started in November, well over 100 properties have been surveyed in Sonoma County by at least four archaeologists and a similar number of tribal monitors, he said. The teams are on hand for cleanup work in areas where artifacts are likely to be found, and when such discoveries occur unexpectedly the contractors halt work and summon the experts, said Clay Carithers, the National Environmental Policy Act compliance officer for the Army Corps’ Sacramento District. The two men work as part of a little-known aspect of the Army Corps of Engineers’ clearing of debris from some 4,500 Sonoma County properties incinerated by the October wildfires.ĭwarfed by the painful losses of life and property to the most destructive wildfires in state history is a poignant gain: the discovery of Native American artifacts that, like the hand-chipped stone in Glen Ellen, might have remained hidden forever.Īrmy Corps debris removal contractors, who have hauled away nearly 1.3 million tons of debris from Sonoma County, are required under a federally mandated cultural resources protection program to hire archaeologists and tribal monitors such as Carrio to assess and protect any artifacts that turn up. We survived.”Ĭarrio, a member of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria’s Sacred Sites Protection Committee, was summoned to the site two weeks ago by Thomas Martin, the archaeologist employed by a private company who spotted the 2-inch-long chunk of sharpened obsidian. His own presence that day, Carrio said, signified that “we’re still here. “It was kind of like spotting a footprint of your ancestors,” he said. The shiny black piece of obsidian, pointed at one end and with chiseled edges, lay in plain view on earth scorched bare by the Nuns fire on private land in Glen Ellen.ĭavid Carrio, a full-blooded Coast Miwok born and raised in Sonoma County, recognized it immediately as a tool fashioned by his forebears who once inhabited Marin and southern Sonoma counties, a bountiful land for hunter-gatherer people, rich in food and laced by freshwater streams.
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