Ancient Indian Sites Found In Gilroy, Calif.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Archaeologists have found ancient human remains and evidence of Ohlone Indian villages on a construction site in Gilroy's western foothills.

The oldest of the sites - whose discovery in July was just confirmed - is believed to date back as far as 5,000 years, said Elena Reese, the archaeologist hired by the builder to survey and excavate the site so that artifacts and remains could be preserved.

That's the same estimated age Reese has given the skeletal remains of three adult skeletons discovered at the village site.

The first Ohlone village site was found at one end of the 1,800-acre parcel during a preliminary survey in 1993 by another team, Reese said.

Two other sites were discovered this year by her group, which included Ohlone Indian representatives, Reese said.

The finds were not announced because by law such information can be kept confidential by the city, consultants and builder in order to protect the integrity of Native American village and burial sites and their artifacts and remains.

City officials and Reese agreed to discuss the discovery when assured that the exact location of the sites would not be revealed.

Reese said only a small fraction of the construction site, areas where building and grading will actually take place, has been surveyed, so the parcel may contain many more artifacts.

The Ohlones, a loose grouping of Stone Age Native Americans made up of several dozen subtribes that spoke eight to 12 distinct but related languages, was the most densely populated Native American group in California.

About 10,000 individuals lived between Point Sur and San Francisco at the time of the first European contact in the 1700s, according to experts.

The Ohlones were hunter-gatherers who did not plant crops and who used stone tools.

Among the artifacts unearthed by Reese and her team were flakes of stone from the production of stone implements and stones used to grind foodstuffs, such as acorns.

Reese said the Native American remains found in Gilroy and the artifacts have been removed to a safe storage place.

The remains will most likely be reburied at a different location on the Eagle Ridge site, where archaeologists continue to monitor the grading operations.

Radiocarbon-dating techniques placed the age of artifacts unearthed at the first village site in 1993 at 750 to 1,520 years old, Reese said.

She estimated the two more recently discovered sites are of villages as old as 5,000 years and possibly were in continual use for thousands of years.

She based her age estimate of the more recently discovered sites - carbon dating has not been done - on the artifacts found and how they differ from those at the first, more modern site.