Cultural and Paleontological Resources

4.10 CULTURAL AND PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES This section describes existing sensitive cultural and historical resources in the City of San Mateo, regulations protecting those resources, and the potential for the proposed General Plan Update to impact these resources. This analysis is summarized from a review of historic building records; a prior archaeological investigation performed by David Chavez, consulting archaeologist for the City of San Mateo Planning Department; and a cultural resource assessment for the Versailles Housing Project prepared in April 2005 by Basin Research Associates, a consulting firm specializing in the analysis of cultural resources, to identify prehistoric and historic archaeological resources in the City and vicinity.1 The City of San Mateo has initiated consultation with Native American tribes as required under Senate Bill (SB) 18. As a result, the City received a list of tribes with traditional lands or cultural places in the area. The City contacted these tribes for further consultation. The following definitions are common terms used to discuss the regulatory requirements and treatment of cultural resources: • Cultural resources is the term used to describe several different types of properties: prehistoric and historical archaeological sites; architectural properties such as buildings, bridges, and infrastructure; and resources of importance to Native Americans. • Historic properties is a term defined by the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) as any prehistoric or historic district, site, building, structure, or object included in, or eligible for inclusion on, the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP), including artifacts, records, and material remains related to such a property. • Historical resource is a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) term that includes buildings, sites, structures, objects, or districts, each of which may have historical, prehistoric, architectural, archaeological, cultural, or scientific importance, and is eligible for listing or is listed in the California Register of Historical Resources (CRHR). • Paleontological resource is defined as including fossilized remains of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms, fossil tracks and trackways, and plant fossils. A unique paleontological site would include a known area of fossil-bearing rock strata. 4.10.1 EXISTING SETTING PREHISTORY The City of San Mateo is set between two dominant physical features, San Francisco Bay to the east and the ridge of hills along the City’s western border. The project area was within an environmentally advantageous area for Native Americans, falling between the resources of the San Francisco bayshore (shellfish, fish, waterfowl, tule) and the foothills (acorns, seed, game, stone). In addition, San Mateo Creek provided a year-round source of water and riparian resources. North-south travel would have been relatively easy between the marshy bayshore and rugged hills, and several nearby passes provide access to the interior San Andreas rift valleys and the Pacific Coast. 1 As this assessment is primarily summarized from both the Citywide Archaeological Report prepared by David Chavez and a cultural resource assessment conducted by Basin Research Associates for the Versailles project, this section incorporates by reference all of the sources from these two reports. Both reports are available for review in the City of San Mateo Planning Division. City of San Mateo General Plan Update July 2009 Draft Environmental Impact Report 4.10-1 4.10 CULTURAL AND PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES Native American occupation and use of the general area appears to extend over 5000–7000 years and may be longer. Evidence for early occupation along the bayshore has been hidden by rising sea levels from about 15,000 to 7,000 years ago, or was buried under sediments caused by bay marshland infilling along estuary margins from about 7,000 years onward. Early occupants concentrated on hunting, gathering various plant foods, and collecting shellfish. Archaeological information suggests an increase in the prehistoric population over time with an increasing focus on permanent settlements with large populations in later periods. This change from hunter-collectors to an increased sedentary lifestyle is due to more efficient resource procurement but with a focus on staple food exploitation, the increased ability to store food at village locations, and the development of increasingly complex social and political systems including long-distance trade networks. The information obtained from archaeological studies in the general area has played a key role in refining both the local and regional interpretations of Native American history for central California. Occupation and socio-cultural utilization of the San Mateo Peninsula area, prior to European contact, is not well known. Many prehistoric archaeological sites have been destroyed or are not accessible due to ground surface cover. Based on the data from archaeological sites which have survived, available data from sites located in other Bay counties (San Francisco, Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa) and ethnographic sources, it is possible to present at least a partial picture of the prehistoric human activities in the area. According to Chavez, the prehistoric way of life in the San Mateo Peninsula can be characterized as a hunting and gathering network of subsistence systems. Seasonally, parties went out from the villages to temporary camps within their territory to exploit the various available resources through hunting and gathering techniques. Subsistence patterns included the exploitation of marine resources by gathering mussel and shellfish in season, fishing for trout and salmon, taking of seals, and hunting land mammals. Intensive use of plant foods included the common utilization of acorns through the leaching process. Ethnographic evidence suggests that San Mateo area people apparently relied on seed-bearing annual plants which were burned over yearly to increase the yield. Native hazelnuts, tubers, and grasses were gathered and baked in earthen ovens. Amateur archaeologist Jerome Hamilton recorded 40 shell mounds along San Mateo Creek and its immediate vicinity between 1896 and 1936. The Hamilton Mounds (Hamilton 1896-1936) were field checked by Chavez (1983) and most have been assigned reported cultural resource “C” numbers by the California Historical Resources Information System, Northwest Information Center, CSU Sonoma (CHRIS/NWIC) rather than official trinomial site numbers. The sites in the study area generally consist of dark midden (culturally affected) soils containing large quantities of shell, primarily obtained from the bayshore area. According to Hamilton’s data, aboriginal human remains were reported from all but four of his 40 sites, and all but three contained large and varied artifact assemblages including mortars, pestles, manos, charmstones, bone and deer/elk horn tools, projectile points (including obsidian), and shell ornaments. Unfortunately, most of the mound sites in the general study area have been leveled and partially covered by roads, buildings, parking lots, and even a park over the past 70 to 100 years. The midden from the mounds was used to construct garden paths, sidewalks, roads, and even tennis courts in the San Mateo area. The prehistoric sites recorded by Hamilton were reported to range in size from 2,000 square feet to 4 acres, although the majority of site boundaries have never been formally determined for any of the sites. On the average, the sites appear to have extended over 1 acre. Hamilton recorded mound heights ranging from 2 to 25 feet with an average of 7 feet. Chronological General Plan Update City of San Mateo Draft Environmental Impact Report July 2009 4.10-2 4.10 CULTURAL AND PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES sequences have not been defined for any of the sites, primarily due to the lack of controlled archaeological excavations. ETHNOGRAPHY The California Indians who occupied the Peninsula at the time of European contact are known as the Costanoan. The term Costanoan is derived from the Spanish word Costanos, meaning coast people. No native name for the Costanoan people as a whole is known to have existed in prehistoric times. Bay Area descendents of these people prefer the name Ohlone. Informational sources for Ohlone ethnographic data are limited primarily to European accounts during visits to the coast. Linguistic evidence suggests that the immediate ancestry of the historically known Ohlone people moved into the San Francisco region about A.D. 500. Likely they migrated from the Delta of the San Joaquin Sacramento River area. This theory of Costanoan language arrival into the San Francisco area is chronologically consistent with the appearance of Late Horizon artifact assemblages in archaeological sites in the Bay Area. The Ramaytush subdivision of the Costanoan included much of present day San Mateo and San Francisco counties. Based on Spanish mission records and archaeological data, researchers have estimated a population of 1,400 for the Ramaytush group in 1770. The Ssalson tribelet (San Mateo Area) included seven villages located primarily along San Mateo Creek. The Ssalson held minimally 30-35 square miles of foothill and bayshore. The aboriginal lifeway apparently disappeared by 1810 due to its disruption by EuroAmerican diseases, a declining birth rate, the cataclysmic impact of the mission system, and the later secularization of the missions by the Mexican government. The Costanoan were

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