Abstract
The talk presents present the results of a recent collaborative study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe descendant community at Síi Túupentak, an ancestral heritage Native American Ohlone village and associated cemetery in the southeast San Francisco Bay area. The study documents the lifeways of the inhabitants of this substantial sedentary settlement for four centuries prior to their forced relocation by Spanish colonizers in 1805, exploring economic adaptations, health, and social-political organization. The study provides a bridge of Ohlone lifeways from pre-European contact through post-contact — a period of momentous change in the lives of native people.
As requested by the Tribe prior to the start of the project, detailed archaeometric analyses were carried out on the ancestral Ohlone individuals recovered from burial excavations to gain new insights into community trends, social and ideological complexity, and the lives of these individuals. Tribal members and representatives of the scientific community are collectively looking into the lives and tragedy of the death of people from the past. For the Tribe, this includes sex determination to provide a greater perspective on the persona of each individual, rather than the nebulous “indeterminate” status of a person or child. If it were not for their sacrifice, struggles, and commitment to their families, Muwekma Ohlone would not survive to this day. Today, the Muwekma Ohlone celebrate the lives of their ancestors by retelling their history and stories through archaeology, and ultimately honor them when they are returned to the warep (the earth), where their loved ones originally placed them with love and respect.
Bio
Brian Byrd has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in Tucson and has done research in a variety of semi-arid and arid settings world-wide. After archaeological training in the American Southwest, his research focused on the Near East exploring the transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the onset of sedentary life, and the social organization of early villages. For some time, however, he has practiced archaeology in California, directing numerous cultural resources management projects focused on the archaeological record of ancestral Native Americans, especially in desert, coastal and island settings. Lately his work is concentrated in the greater San Francisco Bay area and involves collaboration with indigenous communities. Brian works at the Far Western Anthropological Research Group in Davis and is a research associate at the University of California, Davis. He is also a proud Tribal Citizen of the federally recognized Shawnee Tribe.
