The focus of this paper will be on the Emeryville mound. This mound is located in the San Francisco Bay area. More specifically, in the city of Oakland. The Emeryville mound is associated with the Native American Ohlone tribe. There was originally a culture of a half a dozen or more mounds in Shellmound Park (Nelson 1906 p.1). Theses mounds are so important because they are considered the “cultural jackpot”. This is because the Native American tribes who utilized these mounds, not only built their villages on the mounds, but they also buried their dead there. For this reason the mounds are of much interest to archaeologists. The mounds are an opportunity to find items relating to the Ohlone culture as well as to find human remains for the purposes of bioarcheology. Furthermore, items found at this mound include: shells, bone beads, bones, different species of mammals, birds, and fishes, largely decorative objects, as well as burials. Also, looking at the dimensions of the site, Nelson's report referenced Dr.Uhle’s report for measurements of the mound which said, “The Emeryville mound has the form of a truncated cone, with east-and-west basal diameter of 270 feet, and a diameter of 145 at the top, which is…show more content… Max Uhle was one of the first to do work on the site in 1902, and then Nelson sought to confirm Uhle’s findings (Nelson 1906). The third excavation was led by Schneck (1926). All three excavations are important but what made Nelson’s excavation unique was that, “Nelson carefully recorded provenience information for the specimens he collected, including vertebrate remains and bulk sediment samples, and most of these materials remain at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum, stratigraphic analyses can still be conducted with these data” (Nelson 1906 p. VI). Also, Nelson provided great insight after excavation as to what formation processes were present, specifically looking at
