SCIENTISTS PORE OVER BONE BITS : VAL VERDE SITES YIELD CLUES TO PAST.

Byline: Lisa Van Proyen Daily News Staff Writer

Like strategists solving a gigantic puzzle, researchers at UC Santa Barbara meticulously piece together ancient Indian bone fragments found near Val Verde. The smallest pieces are less than a millimeter, while the larger ones are the size of femurs.

``It's very fragmentary stuff. We're trying to get them all together,'' said Kevin Miller, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Anthropology. ``There are thousands of fragments.''

In late February, the California Department of Transportation sent the university boxes of bone fragments and an array of artifacts from the Chumash and Tatavium tribes who inhabited the region that now encompasses the Santa Clarita Valley.

The ancient remains, buried just off Highway 126, were found in December as Caltrans workers began surveying the dangerous, two-lane road for widening.

Caltrans archeologists spent two months sifting through soil for bone fragments and artifacts from people who roamed and traded along the western Santa Clarita Valley foothills. They completed their work Feb. 28.

The excavation angered some American Indians, who saw it as disrespectful of their people. But Caltrans officials said the agency closely followed strict state and federal guidelines in unearthing the remains.

Archeologists believe they exhumed 17 American Indians who lived over three time periods, according to Margaret Buss, a senior environmental planner for Caltrans, which routinely conducts its own archeological excavations.

As required by law, the unearthing was monitored by several American Indians most likely descended from tribes whose burials were exhumed.

Along with the human bone fragments, the findings included milling stones, remnants of plant seeds, arrowheads and ancient bowls. The items do not fit into a single time period, Buss said.

The state agency wants UC Santa Barbara to conduct studies to determine the ages and genders in the burials. Other labs will conduct radiocarbon tests to date the findings.

Officials have a year to complete the work before the bone fragments and artifacts are reburied in an area deemed appropriate by tribal descendants, according to federal laws.

University researchers said last week they are just starting to sort through the material.

``We're getting all our ducks in a row,'' Walker said.

The researchers find it most interesting that the remains are from inland Chumash and Tatavium tribes, rather than the more commonly studied island Chumash who lived off the Ventura coast, he said.

``The tribe that they come from - they're not people that we generally see,'' he said. ``This would be a very good thing to contrast.''

Walker said his team is working slowly on piecing together and washing the dusty remnants.

``We're figuring out which body parts we have,'' he said.