Archaeologists Unearth 2,000 Year Old Village Near Bishop RENO, NV (KUNR) - For the past seven years, in preparation for an expansion of US 395 near Bishop, archaeologists have been sifting through part of an ancient village that had been consistently occupied for more than 2,000 years. According to Caltrans Archeologist Tom Mills, this dig is significant in that it doubled the number of known house floors from this ancient period along the east side of the Sierra.

Mills: For this time period I think here on the whole east side we've had a total of six. And just in this very small area we were studying out here we had 12, which leads us to infer this village site was probably pretty big.

The site is on a landform that was next to a marsh near the Owens river, that is until the Owens Valley project piped the water to Los Angeles. Mills says even though these ancestors of the Bishop area Paiutes ate meat and fish, their diet was largely vegetarian.

Mills: And there was an abundance of milling stones for food processing, which tells us that during the time that these houses were used the main food source was the local flora.

Scientists believe pine nuts, rice grasses and other plants made up the bulk of these ancient peoples' diets. The Bishop Paiute tribe assisted in providing ethnographic background on the site that was occupied up until the advent of European settlers in the early 20th century.
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