Monday, Dec. 27, 1999

Work on 1987 discovery on hold

By Mike Lee Herald staff writer

Ancient artifacts. Accidental discovery. International interest. Book deals. And widespread controversy.

That story line belonged to the Richey Clovis Cache in East Wenatchee nearly 10 years before Kennewick Man emerged at the edge of the Columbia River as the great granddaddy of all archaeological disputes in Washington.

Today, the parallels are hard to miss.

Unlike Kennewick Man, the East Wenatchee find is largely forgotten outside the archaeological community - and even there the details are growing dim.

But it remains a compelling story. That's even though it's perhaps only half-told as archaeologists turn to other pursuits during a 15-year "cooling off" period the Washington State Historical Society had to agree to before getting archaeological rights to the site, said Lynn Anderson, head of collections for the society.

Orchard managers notified a local amateur archaeologist, who called in Robert Mierendorf, an expert with North Cascades National Park, according to a site history compiled by the North Central Washington Museum in Wenatchee.

The stone points initially were dated at roughly 11,000 years old, and the collection retains the name of the orchard owners, Dr. Mack and Susan Richey of Bellevue. The milky-gray quartz artifacts are thought to have belonged to hunter-gatherers who roamed the New World at the end of the last Ice Age.

The tools apparently were made from a quarry near Ephrata and at least one archaeologist suspected a campsite is buried near the cache.

Assorted Clovis points have turned up around Washington before and since, said Anderson, but nothing comes close to matching the importance of the East Wenatchee site. Clovis is a reference to the New Mexico town near where the first fluted projectile point cache was found in 1932.

"When people realized that these items were as old as they were and they were real and not fake, there was worldwide interest," Anderson said.

"Of even greater significance, the site contained more artifacts ... undisturbed within a contained area, than any site discovered previously," said the Pleistocene Times, published by the North Central Washington Museum. "This gave scientists a remarkable opportunity to study the culture of these people."

The Wenatchee museum was besieged by 10,000 visitors who tromped past the dig and through the base laboratory for the 1990 expedition into prehistory. The dig even spurred an article in National Geographic.

Based on three days of work, scientists determined the site warranted more extensive study, which took place in November 1990 under the direction of Michael Gramly of the Buffalo Museum of Science in New York. In all, more than 68 stone and bone artifacts were found at the site, and the pieces removed were replaced with copper replicas.

The originals are considered premier pieces of Clovis "lithic technology" - the blades that shaped a culture.

Protests by leaders of the Colville tribe aborted the second round of archaeological work. The Colvilles - one of the tribes now claiming Kennewick Man - believe the Clovis people of East Wenatchee are their ancestors.

"Local Indian groups were watching things very closely, and it just boiled up from there," said Mark Behler, curator at the North Central Washington Museum. "Things were put on hold, and that's where it stands."

The walls of the pit were lined with porous cloth and gravel was spread on the bottom for drainage. Then the site was filled with dirt and replanted with apple trees.

At least one artifact is known to have been left at the dig, and archaeologists suspect more are there. "There are some areas that they wanted to go on into, but they had to stop," Behler said.

In July 1992, a special order of the state Legislature allowed the historical society to buy perpetual study rights to the site for $250,000, about half the amount of a deal for the artifacts discussed a year earlier by a different group. As part of its agreement, the state was also given the stone points, many of which are on display at the state museum in Tacoma and the Burke Museum in Seattle.

But the purchase also cost 15 years, time that the Richeys demanded to allow emotions to cool and interested parties to create a site management plan. "There was a lot of hard feelings," Anderson said. "It just kind of caused an explosion at the time."

She said the historical society hasn't made any specific plans about how to proceed when the ban is lifted in 2007.

David Nicandri, director of the state historical society, told the Wenatchee World in 1992 that the society wants to complete the dig someday.

"The points have been in the ground thousands of years. A few more years won't hurt," he said. "The passions seem to require a cooling-off period so a different generation of people can deal with it, and I wish them better luck."