By Peter Fimrite
April 22, 2014 | Updated: April 23, 2014 7:29am
A treasure trove of Coast Miwok life dating back 4,500 years - older than King Tut's tomb - was
 discovered in Marin County
 and then destroyed to make
 way for multimillion-dollar
 homes, archaeologists told
The Chronicle this week.
The American Indian burial ground and village site, so rich in history that it was dubbed the
 "grandfather midden," was
 examined and categorized
 under a shroud of secrecy
 before construction began
 this month on the $55 million Rose Lane development in Larkspur.
The 300-foot-long site contained 600 human burials, tools, musical instruments, harpoon tips,
spears and throwing sticks from a time long before the introduction of the bow and arrow. 
The bones of grizzly and black bears were also found, along with a ceremonial
 California condor burial.
"This was a site of considerable archaeological value," said Dwight Simons, a consulting
 archaeologist
 who analyzed 7,200 bones, including the largest collection of bear bones ever found in a
 prehistoric site
 in the Bay Area. "My estimate of bones and fragments in the entire site was easily over a
 million, and
 probably more than that. It was staggering."

No artifacts were saved

All of it, including stone tools and idols apparently created for trade with other tribes,
was removed,
 reburied in an undisclosed location on site and apparently graded over, destroying the
 geologic
 record and ending any chance of future study, archaeologists said. Not a single artifact
 was saved.
Lost forever was a carbon-dated record in the soil layers of indigenous life going back
 approximately to the time the Great Pyramid of Giza was built in Egypt. It was, said
 several prominent
 archaeologists, the largest, best-preserved, most ethnologically rich American Indian
 site found in
 the Bay Area in at least a century.
"It should have been protected," said Jelmer Eerkens, a professor of archaeology at
 UC Davis who
 visited the site as a guest scholar. "The developers have the right to develop their land,
 but at least
 the information contained in the site should have been protected and samples should
 have been
 saved so that they could be studied in the future."
The shell mound was first documented in Larkspur in 1907, but no one knew its
 significance until
 a developer decided to build homes, prompting an examination of the grounds.

Archaeologists brought in

The development was approved by the city in 2010, but the developer, Larkspur
 Land 8 Owner LLC,
 was required under the California Environmental Quality Act to bring in
 archaeologists to study
 the shell mound under the direction of American Indian monitors before it
 could build.
The developers hired San Francisco's Holman & Associates Archaeological
 Consultants to
 conduct an excavation, and that firm spent the past year and a half on the site, 
calling in 25
 archaeologists and 10 other specialists to study aspects of the mound. As required
 by the
 environmental act, their work was monitored by the Federated Indians of Graton
 Rancheria, who
 were designated the most likely descendants of Larkspur's indigenous people.
The American Indian leaders ultimately decided how the findings would be handled,
 and they
 defended their decision to remove and rebury the human remains and burial artifacts.
"The philosophy of the tribe in general is that we would like to protect our cultural
 resources and
 leave them as is," said Nick Tipon, a longtime member of the Sacred Sites
 Protection Committee
 of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. "The notion that these cultural
 artifacts belong to  the public is a colonial view."
But Eerkens and several other top archaeologists said a lot more could have been
 done to protect
 the shell mound. The problem was that the work was done under a confidentiality
 agreement,
 so little was known about it until March when some of the archaeologists
 discussed their work
 during a Society for California Archaeology symposium in Visalia.

An extraordinary site

It was too late by then to preserve the site and, by all accounts, the archaeologists
 at the 
symposium were stunned.
"In my 40 years as a professional archaeologist, I've never heard of an
 archaeological site
 quite like this one," said E. Breck Parkman, the senior archaeologist for the
 California State Parks.
 "A ceremonial condor burial, for example, is unheard of in California. This was
 obviously a very
 important place during prehistory."
The developer, Larkspur planning officials and officials at Holman &
 Associates all
 pointed to tribal leaders.
"We coordinated the entire time with the tribe and the archaeological team 
to make sure it was a
 collaborative effort and that things were handled in accordance with the
 tribe's wishes,"
 said Brian Olin, the senior vice president for New Home Company, which is
 part of a joint venture
 with Larkspur Land 8.
Miley Holman, the owner of the archaeological firm, referred all inquiries to
 the American Indians,
 as did Neal Toft, the Larkspur planning director.
"The city did not participate or oversee any of the archaeological digs or
 discovery," Toft said.
 "The Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria managed the oversight along
 with a qualified
 archaeologist. We were not apprised or assessed of any significant finds,
 and in fact we kept
 out of it."
Greg Sarris, the chairman for the 1,300-member tribe, was far from
 apologetic about what
 happened to the archaeological site. It is nobody else's business, he said,
 how the tribe
 chooses to handle the remains and belongings of its ancestors.
"Our policy is that those things belong to us, end of story," said Sarris,
 whose tribe recently
 opened the Graton Resort & Casino in Rohnert Park. "Let us worry
 about our own
 preservation. If we determine that they are sacred objects, we will rebury
 them because in
 our tradition many of those artifacts, be they beads, charm stones or
 whatever, go with the
 person who died. ... How would Jewish or Christian people feel if we
 wanted to dig up
 skeletal remains in a cemetery and study them? Nobody has that right."
The protection of cultural sites has been a prickly topic for decades
 in the Bay Area, where
 American Indian shell mounds were once abundant around
 San Francisco Bay. There is
 often tension, and there are sometimes courtroom battles, between
 American Indians,
 who generally want ceremonial items left alone, and archaeologists
 who want to collect
 and preserve ancient artifacts and village sites for science.
State and federal laws attempt to balance the two - protecting
 cultural sites and giving
 American Indians a say over what happens - but in most cases
 a private-property owner
 can't be forced to protect a cultural site.
The new homes, on a 22-acre former tidal estuary of Corte
 Madera Creek, across from
 Hall Middle School in central Larkspur, will include 42 senior
 housing units, eight senior
 cottage homes, six affordable-housing town houses and 29
 single-family homes. They are
 expected to go on the market in the fall for $1.9 million
 to $2.5 million.

Shrouded in secrecy

Nondisclosure agreements are relatively common when dealing with
 Indian burials because
 of the historical problems American Indians have had with looters,
 grave robbers and
 vandals, but the archaeologists believe the developer was behind the
 secrecy.
"The developer was reluctant to have any publicity because,
 well - let's face it - because
 of 'Poltergeist,' " said Simons, referring to the 1982 movie about
 a family tormented by
 ghosts and demons because their house was built on top of a burial 
ground.
They also question Larkspur planning officials, who could have
 protected the mound by
 ordering a redesign or mandating construction of a cap over the site.
 Critics suspect
 planning decisions were influenced by the fact that Larkspur is getting
 out of the deal
 a 2.43-acre piece of land to build a community center.
"It's like the fox watching the henhouse," said Al Schwitalla, an
 archaeologist hired by
 Holman & Associates to analyze artifacts at the site. He said
 radiocarbon dating was
 arbitrarily limited and DNA testing was prohibited, a move that
 prevented confirmation of
 a genetic link to Graton Rancheria tribe members.

Lost treasures

A draft report is being prepared documenting what was found inside
 the Larkspur mound,
 but the actual items are lost to science and future study. That includes
 atlatl throwing
 sticks, which were used for hunting before the bow and arrow. There
 were also thousands
 of shells and the bones of bat rays, waterfowl, deer, sea otters and
 some 100 grizzly and
 black bears. Archaeologists say the remains of the condor, a species
 revered by the Miwok,
 could be an indication that the birds were kept as pets, possibly for
 their feathers.
There were also antler tools, flutes, beads, bone awls, hairpins, game
 pieces and ritualistic
 stone objects apparently used to trade for obsidian and beads from
 Napa-area tribes,
 according to archaeologists.
"There are a lot of things that went wrong here," Eerkens said.
 "It's really a shame."
Peter Fimrite is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail:
 pfimrite@sfchronicle.com