March 2004 - Society for California Archaeology

38
Articles
will understand. Summer faded into the misty fall – the
archaeologists’ least favored season as leaves are forever
blowing across the site, usually just as everything has been
cleaned up for a photo. Fall turned to winter, and rain
hammered down like oversized buckshot as a deluge of miniwaterfalls
cascaded from the elevated freeway above our
heads. While the freeway provided some shelter, the climatic
assault intensified when tractor-trailers speeding through
puddles overhead sent huge jets of spray over the entire crew.
Still, covered head to foot
with yellow oilskins and red
Gore-tex, they got on with
the job. So thanks to the
hard-line core crew of Mike
Meyer, Mike Stoyka, Maria
Ribeiro, and Brian Mischke.
And also to Don Bignell,
Melinda Button, Chris
Caputo, Gina George,
Suzanne Howard Carter,
Christian Gabriel, Ginger
Hellmann, Damon Haydu,
Maria LaCalle, Sandra
Massey, Mike Newland,
Sunshine Posta, Annita
Waghorn, Mark Walker, and
Grace Ziesing (editor of our
almost 700 page project
Research Design and
Treatment Plan). They got
their hopes high, their hands
dirty, and their designer (or
thrift store) work gear
covered in mud. And my
belated apologies to the crew
on Block 7 who were nearly
deafened by the roar of traffic
noise as the commute
assailed the Bay Bridge just a
few feet away and the winds
wafted exhaust fumes all
over the site. Thanks to the
historic researchers, Nancy
Olmsted, the late Roger
Olmsted, and Elaine-Maryse
Solari, whose detailed work
Figure 5: The granite base below Privy 1326 on Block 4.
paved the way for the
project. And then the
prehistoric whiz kids -
Thomas Martin – who dealt with the remains of the Native
American site discovered near Third Street and
geoarchaeologist Jack Meyer who fearlessly descended into
the depths of Pleistocene sands below the city in narrow 15 ft.
deep trenches, recording stratigraphic deposits never before
seen by human eyes. Thanks go also to Erica Gibson’s back
room boys - actually mostly the opposite gender – in the lab
at the ASC who dealt with the thousands of artifacts that were
shipped back in an almost endless stream. And thanks finally
to Dani Renan, our safety and hazardous site training
consultant who made sure everything on the project was
CALOSHA kosher and
the crew emerged at the
end of the day with the
same number of digits
they had at the
beginning.
Was it fun? In parts.
We recorded the
excavation of the old
days of subterranean San
Francisco on video.
When the twenty hours
of tape is edited to
something manageable
and hopefully broadcast
on public television,
those of you who weren’t
there will be able to
judge for yourselves.
And the future will have
a record of the social
history of the project.
But intriguing though
the occupation of
archaeologist may sound
and dedicated though
your crew may be, there
were times, yes, there
were times. They were
usually around 7am on a
winter’s morning, when
the frigid bay winds
howled through the
tunnel of the columns
holding up the freeway,
like Mark Twain’s ghost
riding on the back of
some demented
banshee. And then we
hunkered down and froze and cursed both our fortune and the
ancient residents of this city and their scattered time capsules.
Next Issue: The California Grizzly...
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SCA Newsletter 38(1)