Radiocarbon Dating of Malibu Artifacts
Confirms Importance of Farpoint Site
• National Science Foundation and
Smithsonian Officials Are Among Those Urging Preservation and
Additional Archaeological Research at Point Dume Property
•
Archaeologist Gary Stickel announced at a
recent lecture at the Malibu Public Library that a stone
spearhead, or point, found at a local construction site by a
Native American project monitor in 2005 has been
established as an artifact from the oldest archaeological find
in the City of Malibu.
Radiocarbon dating of mussel shell
fragments from the site that was provided gratis by the
National Science Foundation at the Accelerator
Mass Spectrometer Laboratory at the University
of Arizona dates them to 9074 BP (Before Present).
The shells would have been brought to the
site, Dr. Stickel says, by the area’s prehistoric
inhabitants, ancestors of the Chumash, the earliest recorded
Native Americans who inhabited much of the immediate coastal
area, including Malibu.
The archaeologist and his research
associate, James Flaherty, indicate that the shell samples were
found above the level where the spearhead, believed to be a
Clovis era artifact, representing the “oldest
identifiable culture in the New World,” was found. The
date that Clovis people might have occupied the site has not
been established, but proponents of their presence think they
could have inhabited Malibu from 12,500 to 11,000 years ago.
Stickel says that Edgar Perez’s
find of the spearhead, unearthed during construction work
on private property on Point Dume, is “a major
archaeological discovery of almost unlimited
significance.”
The ebullient archaeologist, who dispenses
copies of a letter confirming his role as an archaeological
consultant for the film “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
the way other PhDs provide CVs, says the Farpoint site, as the
property is known, “keeps yielding new secrets that are
important” to learning about the people who lived in
Malibu 9000 and more years ago.
Stickel says, “There is vital
additional work to be done at the site.” The current
property owner prohibits further excavation, but Stickel hopes
to raise the funds to acquire the site and permanently protect
it. He adds, “Additional excavation could provide
human teeth or bone material that could [corroborate] theories
of human habitation.”
Dennis Stanford, the chief archaeologist at
the Smithsonian Institution and a Clovis era expert, says
Farpoint is a “site of national significance and requires
interdisciplinary research and protection.”
A growing chorus of archaeological voices
supports additional exploration of the site that some say could
hold the key to where the people who inhabited the western
coastal areas originated.
Stickel has urged the public to take
greater interest in the find and rally behind the call for more
research. He is critical of what he describes as a lack of
interest by Malibu municipal officials in local archaeology.
Farpoint’s champion says, “Unfortunately, the City
of Malibu is not following the recommendations of Dr. Stanford
and has done nothing to protect and preserve this special
site.”
