Study of Bulk Sediment Samples from West Berkeley Shell Mound
The 2018 Stahl Endowment provided generous funding for the investigation of archaeological materials from the West Berkeley Shell Mound (CA-ALA-307) curated in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA). As one of the largest shell mounds in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was excavated in the 1950s by Robert Heizer employing a coarse-grained methodology (shovel broadcast). Our work is focusing on 33 bulk sediment samples from two Units (E-6, I-5) collected at 1 foot intervals from the surface to the bottom of the excavation.