Authors: Jun Sunseri, Matthew Moore, Rebecca Allen, Zack Emerson
Stahl funds provided resources for our team to participate in community-based collaborative projects in direct partnership with Native Californian communities. Teams of students and affiliates have helped deliver low-impact archaeology workshops to groups of several Native Californian community partners as well as an audience of State and Federal agency personnel. Our goal was to demonstrate and teach a suite of non-excavation methodologies available to communities who wish not to disturb Ancestral places and how to apply them in negotiations with agencies, municipalities, and other land managers. Several of these low-impact methodologies are also incorporated in a project exploring the relation of different types of fire regimes (Out of control/Wildfire, Industrial/Controlled burns, or Traditional/Cultural Fire) to presentation and legibility of Ancestral places and practices in Tribally-owned properties and UC-managed forests. We also constructed an adobe horno on Tribal propertie with members of the Historic Preservation Department and Tribal Administrators. We shared this experience with teachers and kids from the Tribal School, for whom our team is busy preparing lesson plans and follow on visits for project-based learning.
