Alan Leventhal: a lifetime of service to the Ohlone People
Lecturer Emeritus, San José State University; Tribal Ethnohistorian and Archaeologist, Muwekma Ohlone Tribe
No scholar has worked alongside the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe longer than Alan Leventhal. For more than four decades he has served the Tribe as ethnohistorian and archaeologist. He has traced its families through mission registers and federal censuses, helped build its case for federal acknowledgment, and worked beside tribal members as they cared for ancestors disturbed by the region’s relentless development.
Background
Leventhal earned his B.A. in anthropology at City College of New York (1973) and worked in the early 1970s at the American Museum of Natural History. In the mid-1970s he was a state archaeologist with the Nevada Archaeological Survey at the University of Nevada, Reno. He came to San José State University (SJSU) in 1978. He was Anthropology Lab Director until 1987 and then worked in the College of Social Sciences Dean’s Office, while teaching anthropology as a lecturer until he retired in 2019. He is now Lecturer Emeritus. His 1993 SJSU master’s thesis reinterpreted Bay Area shellmound sites through the mortuary complex at CA-ALA-329, the Ryan Mound. At SJSU he advised the Native American Student Organization, and he is a veteran of the 500 Mile American Indian Spiritual Run of the early 1980s. He has served on the Board of the Muwekma Ohlone Preservation Foundation since 2021.
Research Focus
Leventhal’s work brings together California archaeology, ethnohistory, genealogy, and bioarchaeology. In recent decades he has worked with SJSU students and with colleagues at many universities on ancient DNA, stable isotope, and radiocarbon studies of ancestral Ohlone sites. These studies are always done under tribal oversight.
With the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe
Leventhal’s partnership with the Tribe began in 1980 with then-Chairwoman Rosemary Cambra. In the mid-1980s it led to Ohlone Families Consulting Services (OFCS), the Tribe’s own cultural resource management firm, where he was a founding archaeologist. With Cambra, Les Field, and other tribal members, he co-authored the essays that first set out the Tribe’s history for a wide audience, including “The Ohlone: Back from Extinction” (1994).
His genealogical research underpins the Tribe’s petition for federal acknowledgment. He co-authored the 1995 petition and the exhibits that followed, documenting tribal members’ descent from the Verona Band families listed in the 1900, 1905–06, and 1910 federal censuses. From 1992 to 1998 he volunteered on the recognition task force of the congressionally created Advisory Council on California Indian Policy, where he was one of the few advocates for previously federally recognized tribes. He has also worked for the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band and the Ohlone/Costanoan-Esselen Nation.
In the field, Leventhal has worked alongside tribal members at ancestral sites across the South Bay. At Kaphan Húunikma in 1992, Muwekma tribal members and OFCS archaeologists excavated more than 100 ancestral burials. The ancestors were reinterred nearby in 1994. At Yukisma (CA-SCL-38) in Milpitas, the Tribe excavated and reburied more than 243 ancestors in 1993–94. With the Tribe’s approval, small samples were set aside for studies that have since shed light on ancient diet and family lineages. In 2009 he worked on the recovery of burials at the Mission Santa Clara neophyte cemetery (1781–1818), which the Tribe named Clareño Muwékma Ya Túnnešte Nómmo, “Where the Clareño Indians Are Buried.” He co-authored the 2022 genomic study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found genetic continuity between ancient individuals from two Bay Area sites and present-day Muwekma members. He has also helped document the Tribe’s military service, from World War I to the present, and has worked with the Tribe on museum exhibitions across the region.
“The Ohlone land is unceded,” Leventhal told San José State in 2021. “They never lost the title to it; it was stolen.” His life’s work has been to make sure that history is documented and cannot be ignored.
Selected Publications
Leventhal, Alan, Les Field, Hank Alvarez, and Rosemary Cambra. 1994. “The Ohlone: Back from Extinction.” In The Ohlone Past and Present: Native Americans of the San Francisco Bay Region, edited by Lowell John Bean, 297–336. Menlo Park, CA: Ballena Press.
Field, Les, Alan Leventhal, Dolores Sanchez, and Rosemary Cambra. 1992. “A Contemporary Ohlone Tribal Revitalization Movement: A Perspective from the Muwekma Costanoan/Ohlone Indians of the San Francisco Bay Area.” California History 71(3): 412–431.
Field, Les W., and Alan Leventhal. 2003. “‘What Must It Have Been Like!’: Critical Considerations of Precontact Ohlone Cosmology as Interpreted through Central California Ethnohistory.” Wicazo Sa Review 18(2): 95–126.
Field, Les W., with Alan Leventhal and Rosemary Cambra. 2013. “Mapping Erasure: The Power of Nominative Cartography in the Past and Present of the Muwekma Ohlones of the San Francisco Bay Area.” In Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States: A Sourcebook, edited by Amy E. Den Ouden and Jean M. O’Brien, 287–310. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Leventhal, Alan, Diane DiGiuseppe, Melynda Atwood, David Grant, Rosemary Cambra, Charlene Nijmeh, Monica V. Arellano, et al. 2011. Final Report on the Burial and Archaeological Data Recovery Program Conducted on a Portion of the Mission Santa Clara Indian Neophyte Cemetery (1781–1818): Clareño Muwékma Ya Túnnešte Nómmo [Where the Clareño Indians Are Buried] Site (CA-SCL-30/H). Report to Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
Severson, Alissa L., Brian F. Byrd, Elizabeth K. Mallott, Amanda C. Owings, Michael DeGiorgio, Alida de Flamingh, Charlene Nijmeh, Monica V. Arellano, Alan Leventhal, Noah A. Rosenberg, and Ripan S. Malhi. 2022. “Ancient and Modern Genomics of the Ohlone Indigenous Population of California.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119(13): e2111533119.
Byrd, Brian F., Monica V. Arellano, Laurel Engbring, Alan Leventhal, and Michael Darcangelo. 2022. “Community-Based Archaeology at Síi Túupentak in the San Francisco Bay Area: Integrated Perspectives on Collaborative Research at a Major Protohistoric Native American Settlement.” Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology 42(2): 135–158.
Leventhal, Alan. 1993. “A Reinterpretation of Some Bay Area Shellmound Sites: A View from the Mortuary Complex from CA-ALA-329, the Ryan Mound.” M.A. thesis, San José State University.