Ancient burial grounds are sacred to Native Americans and are protected by law. Today we excavate burials only when a project threatens to destroy them. Even so, study of the remains of these ancient Californians can tell us a great deal about how they lived - and how they died.
The average life span of the Brazil Site occupants was only 45 years.
THE CEMETERY
In prehistoric times the Brazil Mound was not only a village site, but also a cemetery. In fact, early excavations at the site focused on the removal of many human burials and the artifacts that had been placed with them as grave offerings. It was largely these artifacts - certain types of shell beads, shell ornaments, and charmstones - that the archaeologists used to develop their first ideas about the age of this site and others like it.
Ancient Native American burials are sacred to their living descendants; they are also protected by law. Today most archaeologists remove burials only when they are in danger of being damaged or destroyed, and only after consulting with the Native American community. These burials, and the offerings placed with them, usually are reburied in a safer location. When it is possible to study the human remains before they are reburied, we can learn a great deal about the ancient population: how long they lived, how long ago they were buried, what kinds of diseases or injuries they had, or whether they suffered through periods of famine.
At the Brazil site, these studies showed that the people had many of the same problems we have today - tooth decay, broken bones, infectious diseases, and sometimes poor nutrition. One way that the health of these prehistoric people was very different from ours was in how long they lived: many more children died before the age of five, and the average life span of an adult was about 45 years. This seems very short by modern standards, but it is typical for prehistoric California, where daily life was more demanding and medical treatment was less developed. Women died much more often in childbirth than they do today, and problems that we consider minor - an abscessed tooth, for instance, or a high fever - often caused death for prehistoric people.
How ancient people were buried, and what grave offerings or personal adornments were placed with them, also have a lot to tell us about the way they lived their lives. If some people in the cemetery were buried with many offerings, and others from the same time period had few or none, this might mean that the group recognized different social classes; people who were buried with many offerings probably were either wealthy, or very important, or both.
Among the Brazil Mound burials, about half (two-thirds of the men and one-third of the women) were buried with offerings or adornments. No infants or children under five had any objects with them. Nine indiv-
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