Native American remains were unearthed last week at the construction site of a new beach volleyball complex at UC Berkeley.
The Alameda County Coroner’s Office determined the remains were likely of Native American origin, according to a UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore. UC Berkeley was built atop ancestral Ohlone land.
The bones were found two feet underground and underneath a layer of concrete, according to the Berkeley Scanner, which first reported the news. Gilmore said the campus is coordinating with the California Native American Heritage Commission to make sure the remains are handled appropriately.
The discovery, per California law, triggered a pause on construction in the immediate area until the commission can identify a most likely descendant, who will then have 48 hours to inspect the site and make recommendations for how to move forward.
The new complex — which is set to include five sand courts and seating for up to 500 spectators — is going up at the site of a former parking lot on Bancroft Way and Fulton Street. Construction began last spring.
Gilmore did not immediately respond to questions about when construction would resume, or if work would remain paused to determine whether any additional remains are on the site.
UC Berkeley has come under criticism for its failure to repatriate Native American remains in its collections. During the early 20th century, one of the campus’s esteemed anthropology professors, Alfred Kroeber, encouraged the excavations of Native American gravesites. Some of the bones ended up in a collection of human remains that were for years used to teach students. Others ended up in the university’s Hearst Museum.
Even though Congress in 1990 ordered that museums and universities with federal funding report any Native American remains and return them to tribes, Berkeley still held the remains of 9,100 indigenous people as of 2023 — the largest collection of unrepatriated remains in the country. In the time since, the university has taken steps to repatriate