Scavenging the past

Before we get our feet moving to the ponds near the highway, we can reflect a bit more on the history and exploitation of this space. Below your feet, burnished into the concrete are visions of traditional, local culture, including some of the stories, craftsmanship, and odds-and-ends of daily life that the Ohlone spun from the fabric of this land. A basket, woven tight enough to hold water; shells from the salty bay and ocean; acorns and other staples of the local diet. These are some of the objects that were found in Bay Area shellmounds.

For most of the residents of post-contact Berkeley, the shellmounds were simply curiosities, or perhaps physical impediments to development plans. The shellmounds were gradually and then rapidly pressed into service as something to be put to use, while simultaneously lowering them for other land-use purposes. Without judgment, the early colonists carved into the glimmering hills. The shells, the ashes, and the remains were rich in calcium, phosphorus, zinc, and iron. A century of heavy ranching of the East Bay hills by Spanish cattlemen had left the land eroded, dry, and destitute. In the shellmound was a nourishing fertilizer that could be applied to the soils or mixed in with chicken-feed. As a grid of houses and businesses germinated across the landscape, civil engineers used the shellmound material as a foundation for the boulevards that would connect the new towns.

Upslope in Berkeley, between the two major forks of Strawberry Creek, a new state university was rapidly growing. The architects of this new school—people like Benjamin Ida Wheeler and Phoebe Apperson Hearst—envisioned a pantheon of learning, a gleaming white city of marble and alabaster. Modeling themselves after the celebrated universities of the eastern United States and Europe, they knew that they needed imposing buildings and promenades as well as impressive libraries and museums. Growing the museum collections would be expensive and arduous work, and to the University, the shellmound was a resource that could be scavenged. From the pearlescent soils of this shellmound and the others around the Bay, the university pried over 3,400 artifacts and human remains. Other Universities and tribes have arrived at paths to repatriation and compromise on a realistic path forward. On the Cal campus, most of these “specimens” are still held hostage at the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum.