DISCOVERY BAY – Remains, artifacts and two graves were discovered at Beckett Point and could be thousands of years old, a recently released archaeological report said.
The report, and a work plan, were compiled by Seattle archaeologist Gary Wessen, who led a tribal archaeological team during late June and early this month in a dig for Native American remains.
Those remains were uncovered on Beckett Point Road near a beach on Discovery Bay in late May by a contractor working for the Jefferson County Public Utility District.
The contractor, Pape and Sons, was digging a trench for a $2.8 million PUD community septic system to serve more than 100 Beckett Point residents.
The PUD project aims to repair about 80 failing septic systems on shellfish-rich Discovery Bay.
The discovery prompted a shutdown of the project while the area was examined.
Bones and stone tools and unmodified bone and shell “suggests that that these are relatively late prehistoric materials,” Wessen said.
“We believe that they are probably in the order of a few hundred to a few thousand years old.”
