Emeryville Shellmound [shellmound ALA 309] Artificial Mound : The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map:

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Submitted by symbionspacesuit on Sunday, 14 March 2010 Page Views: 22261

Pre-ColumbianSite Name: Emeryville Shellmound Alternative Name: shellmound ALA 309
Country: United States
NOTE: This site is 9.204 km away from the location you searched for.
Region: The West Type: Artificial Mound
Nearest Town: Oakland Nearest Village: Emeryville
Latitude: 37.835637N Longitude: 122.293828W
Condition:

5	Perfect
4	Almost Perfect
3	Reasonable but with some damage
2	Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1	Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0	No data.
-1	Completely destroyed

Destroyed Ambience:

5	Superb
4	Good
3	Ordinary
2	Not Good
1	Awful
0	No data.

no data Access:

5	Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4	Short walk on a footpath
3	Requiring a bit more of a walk
2	A long walk
1	In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0	No data.

5 Accuracy:

5	co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4	co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3	co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2	co-ordinates of the nearest village
1	co-ordinates of the nearest town
0	no data

4

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Rileyy visited - their rating: Cond: -1 Amb: 4 Access: 5

Emeryville Shellmound is a former artificial mound Alameda County. Shell Mounds are burial mounds like their earthen counterpart (with the exception of the crushed shells of shell fish) are built with similar materials of earth, ash, and gravel. Shell mounds are found along the coastal islands, bays, and river mouths around the whole world from New Zealand, Australia, China, Denmark, Brazil, the Caribbean islands to British Columbia and the lower fourty eight west coast States.

There were many shell mounds in the other California bays but the largest network of Moundbuilder culture in western North America existed along the greater San Francisco bay, San Joaquin, and Sacramento waterways. The shoreline of the bay from Richmond to Oakland had several Mound Clusters as well as the three largest mounds in the bay(Emeryville shellmound ALA 309, West Berkeley shell mound ALA 307, and Ellis Landing CCO 295). Emeryville shellmound (ALA 309) in Muwekma Ohlone country, was the largest of all the west coast mounds. Shellmound (ALA 309) was a truncated cone mound originally 40 to more than 50 feet high (varying by source) and 270 to 350 feet in diameter. The base of shellmound (ALA 309) sat within 130 ft of the original waterfront of Emeryville and 200 ft north of Temescal Creek.

From 1906 to 1909 Nels Christian Nelson walked some 3,000 miles throughout his survey of the shell mounds of the Greater San Francsico Bay area. Numbering each mound by county Nelson took record of 426 sites of shell mound clusters along the waterways of the Ohlone and Miwok.

Emeryville shellmound (ALA 309) held more than 700 human burials one of which prove to be the earliest cranial surgery (300 to 500A.D.) in the western states. Shellmound (ALA 309) near the mouth of Temescal Creek and West Berkeley shellmound (ALA 307) at the mouth of Strawberry Creek two mile north, also had a large number of California condor burials.

Shell Mound Park (115 acre) was open from 1876-1924. In March fo 1877 the park opened with a octagonal dance pavilion on top of shellmound ALA 309. The mound (ALA 309) had been topped and leveled for the foundation of the pavilion to the height of 32 feet. The pavilion was 90 feet in diameter and 40 feet high combined with the remaining 32 feet of prehistory, this 72 ft. focal point of the park was still the tallest man made structuce on the bay at the turn of the 20th century. Shellmound ALA 309 was the center mound of the several smaller shell mounds which made up the Temescal Creek Mound Cluster. The burials an their artifacts of a smaller mound were uncovered in 1896 during the grading for Shell Mound Park's new racetrack. While the park was growing to its height some the mounds of this cluster as well as mounds esle where along the bay were being destroyed by natural causes due to a 10-25 cm global rise in sea levels over 100 year period. Eroding into the bay with the tide at the time of Nels Nelsons survey of the mounds (1906-1909) there was little left to signify a mound other than the exposed human remains and burial artifacts on the muddy surface of the marshland along the waterfront. A waterfront which was possibly much lower than current bay/sea levels when these mounds were built.

Shell Mound Park lasted a few years after prohibition started but eventually closed down in 1924, at which point the park and the mound where leveled to make way for a paint factory which leaked heavy metals into the bay for more than 70 years. The preparations in the late 1990s to clean up this now toxic site reopened the archaeological research on Shellmound(ALA 309).

Today the site of ALA 309 sits under the Bay Street shoping center in Emeryville,CA. More than two hundred feet south of the Shellmound site at the inersection of Shellmound St. and Ohlone Way there is a small park dedicated to the mound and the Ohlone people. In the park there is a ten foot high replica of a shellmound built directly over Temescal Creek and along the wall of the shoping center to the south of the park is a metal arch sugesting the profile of Shellmound (ALA 309). Near the park below the IMAX theature displayed in the hallway to the restrooms are obsidian, stone, and abalone artifacts from Shellmound (ALA 309).

Little is known among the non indian public about this colossal shellmound. There is no museum dedicated to vast Moundbuilder culture of central California or the rest of the west coast. The local library offers little more than the 100 year old works of N.C.Neslson, M. Uhle, and E.W. Gifford. In spite of the loss of such a great American landmark, to the urban onlooker reverent of the thousands of years of rich cultural history, this ancient metropolitan bay becomes an enchanting place to be.

Note: The location given is for the location of the destroyed mound. The nearby park with the "replica" and profile can be found here.
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