With their heads barely visible, two students working in a huge hole attracted the attention of curious visitors at La Purísima Mission State Historic Park near Lompoc on Saturday.
Inquisitive children and adults quickly learned about UC Santa Barbara archaeological students’ efforts to unearth artifacts and information about Chumash life at the site more than 200 years ago.
Doctoral candidate Kaitlin Brown is spearheading the project as part of a summer course, Archaeological Methods and Techniques, for 12 UCSB students.
The findings will become part of Brown’s dissertation project looking at Chumash life at the Mission.
She said she wanted a project with community collaboration and field work, and this will be a quick one — excavation work began in late June and wraps up in early August.
On Saturday, as the students worked to remove and sift soil, passing park visitors stopped to ask questions and receive lessons about the archaeological dig — and what Chumash life did not involve.
“It’s funny because we’re so far down people think that the Chumash lived in holes,” Brown said of the deep excavation work.
In reality, Brown said, the UCSB students have explained that the old adobe apartments from 1813 to 1833 collapsed, leaving rooftops on top of floors.
A monitor on site represents the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians.
Centuries ago, the site was home to 20 two-bedroom apartments that stretched about 420 feet from north to south and housed Chumash families who worked cooks, housekeepers, gardeners, shepherds, farmers, craftsmen and laborers.
Near the dig site, a large display board sits on an easel — at least until the wind blows it over — and spells out the purpose of the project.
A Chumash friendly greeting of “haku” welcomes visitors to “Uncovering the Indigenous Past at Mission La Purísima,” with a Facebook group of the same name set up to provide updates on the excavation.
The display shows some of the artifacts uncovered in previous excavations in the area including an 1800s wine bottle, abalone shell bowl and English saucer.
Brown said this project’s efforts have focused on the inside of an adobe apartment and a midden, or trash heap, to learn more about the Native American residents’ daily lives, including their food.
Armed with trowels, dustpans, brushes and other tools, students painstakingly remove dirt, putting it into buckets to be sifted by others nearby to capture typically tiny artifacts.
As they work, the students carefully record details to keep track of where artifacts were found.
So far, the dig has uncovered many artifacts including 40 glass beads, shell beads, and shell bead-making detritus or debris.
“So they’re definitely making shell beads out here which was long used before the colonial period,” Brown said. “So they’re incorporating not only the glass beads but still using shell beads in their money system.”
In addition to field work, the students are analyzing the uncovered objects in the lab to confirm the findings.
One of the key finds early in the digging was an intact abalone shell believed to have been used as a bowl.
“This was actually on top of the floor inside the apartment,” Brown said of the heirloom find.
Artifacts uncovered by the project will be featured in an exhibit at the UCSB Library and at the La Purísima Mission site with hopes of a permanent public installation to call attention to the role of the Chumash in the area’s history.
On Saturday, the Mission hosted an interpretive event, increasing the visitors to the excavation site.
“If you actually go out into the Mission, there’s hundreds of people out there right now and nobody really knows about this space,” Brown said, adding she hopes to make it clear the site’s history extends beyond the church.
“This was a lot bigger and there was a huge native community that lived here,” she added.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
