Anthropology & Repatriation

These are newsgroup postings and newspaper stories ...there's a lot of text here so I've forgone adding graphics. These will change semi-regularly, to provide an update on political issues of interest in Indian Country. You may also want to check some of the links on the Native American Links page for more information.

Oklahoma man claims some UNL bones as ancestors

BY JOE DUGGAN c. Lincoln [NE] Journal Star 3/31/99

Six months after the University of Nebraska-Lincoln promised to repatriate American Indian burial remains, an Oklahoma man has claimed some of the remains as his possible ancestors. John L. Sipes Jr., a member of the Southern Cheyenne Tribe of Oklahoma, has formally claimed lineal descent to some of the 640 remains the university has called "culturally unidentifiable." "I have numerous documentations of Cheyennes who lived (in Nebraska), hunted there, died there and were buried there," said Sipes, a 22-year tribal historian. He said he wants to make sure his ancestors' remains aren't among the unidentified.

His claim came on the eve of the federal government's approval of plans to return most remains in UNL's possession. An official notice of remains representing 1,014 Pawnee, Arikara and Wichita people should be published today in the Federal Register, said Sam Ball, an archaeologist with the National Park Service in Washington, D.C. The service oversees repatriation on a national level.

If no other tribe makes a competing claim during a 30-day waiting period, representatives of the three tribes may pick up the remains for reburial. The park service has already published two smaller notices of Ponca and Omaha burial remains and neither claim has been contested.

That leaves remains of 640 individuals the university called "culturally unaffiliated," because it lacked documentation or evidence to link the bones directly with a present-day Indian nation. Most of those remains are prehistoric and considered the ancestors of several Great Plains tribes, said Pemina Yellow Bird, a repatriation expert and member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara nations.

On Sept. 1, UNL Chancellor James Moeser signed an agreement with representatives from 16 Indian nations calling for the return of bones at the University of Nebraska State Museum. In the following days, a working group of tribes decided to make a unified claim for the "so-called unidentified ancestors," said Yellow Bird, a member of the working group.

The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska has offered to rebury the unidentified remains.

The precedent-setting claim gained national attention in the anthropology community, where some academics oppose it because they believe tribally- unaffiliated remains should be kept for research purposes. The claim's publication in the Federal Register is pending, Yellow Bird said.

Sipes, who is not a member of the tribe's governmental branch, said he does not necessarily want to repatriate all the unidentified remains. He said he filed the claim to force the university to provide more information, so he could determine whether any remains are those of his ancestors. The claim was filed with assistance from Grassroots NAGPRA, a Lincoln-based repatriation group.

"I didn't want to play no kind of head games with them because I have the documentation and I know my history," Sipes said. "There is a high probability some of my relatives are in those remains." The Cheyenne roamed throughout the western Plains states, including Nebraska, he said. His great-grandparents were both born near the South Platte River in the western part of the state.

Officials familiar with the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act said a lineal claim must be made for a specific, identifiable skeleton or set of remains. They questioned whether the Sipes claim fits the lineal-descent standard.

"You have to be able to attach a name of a known person to a specific set of remains," said Ball, the park service archaeologist. "You can't just go to a site, dig up remains and say, "That's my ancestor. This is where my people lived.'" Another working group member expressed concern the claim will slow down repatriation of the unidentified remains. "It could throw a monkey wrench in that bureaucratic process," said James Riding In, a Pawnee Nation member and Arizona State University history professor.

Meanwhile, Nebraska will look to the National Park Service for direction on the claim, said Jim Estes, director of the State Museum and UNL's acting repatriation coordinator.

"We're really committed to repatriation and we'd like for it to occur as quickly as possible," he said. "But we'd like the remains to go to the groups that are most appropriate."

500-Year-Old Inca Mummies Found
.c The Associated Press By KEVIN GRAY 4/6/99

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Three 500-year-old Inca mummies, the apparent victims of a ritual sacrifice, have been found frozen and in near-perfect condition on an Andean volcano peak in northern Argentina.

Dr. Johan Reinhard said Tuesday that the exceptionally well-preserved remains of two boys and a girl found last month atop the 22,000-foot Mount Llullaillaco near Argentina's border with Chile may offer scientists a rare opportunity to conduct DNA testing on centuries-old bodies.

The mummies apparently contain frozen blood in their heart and lungs, which could reveal ground-breaking clues about diet, disease and conditions during the time of the Incas, the U.S. archaeologist said.

Speaking with The Associated Press, he said the mummies had to be removed from under nearly six feet of dry rock and earth from a burial platform.

Reinhard said two of the mummies were wrapped in intricately woven textiles, but an exact cause of death was not immediately clear. He said CAT scans of the mummies showed all of their internal organs were intact.

"These bodies were frozen, as opposed to past bodies which were freeze-dried,'' said Reinhard, speaking in an interview from Salta, a northern Argentine city near the site. ``They are very lifelike.''

"I expect that when we unwrap them, we will even be able to see the expressions on their faces,'' he said. "The arms looked perfect, even down to the peach fuzz hairs, and the CAT scans have shown that even the kidneys are intact.''

Scientists said the burial platform also held offerings to the Inca gods, including 35 gold, silver and shell statues. Also recovered were ornate woven and embroidered textiles, moccasins and pottery, some still containing food.

"Almost all of the statues are in a state of perfect preservation, including lids on the pottery and even food offerings of meat jerky,'' said Reinhard.

The expeditionary force that recovered the mummies included American, Argentine and Peruvian researchers who had to brave sometimes extreme conditions such as snowstorms and high winds. A grant from the National Geographic Society partially funded the dig.

Reinhard's crew needed 12 days at the volcano's peak to recover the bodies.

Reinhard said he decided to search the area because he had read that Inca ruins had been found on Mount Llullaillaco, which he had climbed several times since 1980.

The three mummies are being kept at a university in Salta, where at least two of them are to remain until the Argentine government finishes building a research facility to house them next year.

Reinhard said at least one body was expected to be sent to the United States for extensive testing.

The discovery was the latest for Reinhard and his mummy hunters.

Last September, they found six frozen mummies on the El Misti volcano in southern Peru, believed to be sacrificial offerings to Inca gods. That burial site included a rare find of ceremonial pots of gold and silver, shedding new light on ancient Indian culture.

The Inca empire once stretched some 2,500 miles along South America's western coast from present-day Colombia to central Chile and an edge of northwestern Argentina. The 90-year empire collapsed in 1532 under the Spanish conquest. The Incas offered human sacrifices to their gods.

Working in Peru in 1995, the same team of archaeologists led by Reinhard also discovered the so-called "Ice Maiden,'' then considered the best-preserved mummy of the pre-Columbian era.

David Hunt, a physical anthropologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, said Tuesday that finding mummies so well-preserved is extraordinary.

"What separates this discovery from other similar finds such as `The Ice Maiden' is the presence of well-preserved soft tissue,'' Hunt said by telephone from Washington.

``It's as if they had been placed in a giant deep freeze. We're really quite lucky that they're in such good condition.''

Miami court takes up fate of ancient Indian circle
By Jim Loney 4/12/99 c. Reuters

MIAMI - The fate of a centuries-old stone circle believed to be one of the most important archaeological sites in Florida was at stake Monday as lawyers began a court fight to stop construction of a $100 million condominium.

As a small group of American Indians watched, Miami-Dade County asked a judge to issue a permanent injunction to prevent a developer from moving or bulldozing the Miami Circle, an Indian relic carved into the limestone bedrock at the mouth of the Miami River.

"Nowhere else in the city, the state or nationally has such a man-made object been discovered,'' Assistant County Attorney Tom Goldstein told the court. "It's tantamount to going in and destroying the Sphinx or the Pyramids.''

The relic -- discovered last summer on a 2.3-acre parcel of land where the Miami River flows into Biscayne Bay in the heart of the city center and the banking district -- is a series of holes and basins bored into the bedrock in the form of a perfect circle 38 feet in diameter.

Carbon-dating tests on artifacts suggested the site was occupied by humans at least 2,000 years ago.

Believed to be the foundation of a ceremonial lodge built by Tequesta Indians who inhabited Florida before the arrival of Europeans, the circle quickly became the hottest political topic in Florida's largest metropolis.

Environmentalists, preservationists and Indian groups emerged to lead the fight to preserve it. The city of Miami and developer Michael Bauman decided to cut it from the bedrock and move it to proceed with the construction of a 600-unit condo and commercial complex.

But surrounding Miami-Dade County, declaring that the circle should be preserved intact, decided in February to seize the property through eminent domain and obtained a preliminary injunction blocking development.

County lawyers Monday asked Miami-Dade Judge Fredricka Smith to make the injunction permanent.

"Please don't underestimate the threat this site is under,'' Assistant County Attorney Thomas Logue told the judge. "The backhoes and the stonecutters were already on the site when the preliminary injunction was issued.''

Lawyers for Brickell Pointe Ltd. and BCOM Inc., the developers, said county commissioners bowed to public pressure and moved to seize the property without knowing if the county could pay for it.

"We do not believe they have the money,'' attorney Toby Brigham, representing Brickell Pointe, said. "We do not believe they are in a position to obtain it.''

A small group of Indians, some in brightly colored traditional clothing, attended the hearing. A women handed a county lawyer a ceremonial rattle "for power'' before his opening argument.

Indian groups, which have argued that the site is sacred ground for them, petitioned to intervene in the case.

"We have a right to a voice in this matter because time after time we never had a voice,'' said Bobby Billie, the spiritual leader of the Independent Traditional Seminole Nation of Florida.

The hearing was expected to last two days. It was not known when a ruling would be made.

Sun's rays said sign of success
BY KAREN GRIESS c. Lincoln Journal Star 4/11/99

Through rain, wind and the wail of storm sirens, they quietly carried signs: "Distressed over captive remains" and "Let our ancestors' remains rest in peace." About 15 people participated in a spiritual walk Thursday from the Capitol to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in hopes of securing American Indian remains. By the time they reached UNL's Bessey Hall, the sun was shining -- a sign, the elders said, the Great Spirit heard their message.

"Our ancestors do not rest while their skeletal remains are (here)," said elder Ken Bordeaux, a Lakota who lives in Lincoln. The walk followed Tuesday's discovery of another bone fragment in Bessey Hall. The fragment, measuring 1.25 inches by 1 inch, was found lying on a laboratory table. "It's a small part of a bone," said James R. Estes, director of the University of Nebraska State Museum. "But we can't say whether it's Native American or not." The university has had Indian remains in its possession for decades. On Sept. 1, UNL officials signed an agreement to return those remains to various tribal representatives. The repatriation has taken months because of complicated legal requirements and federal regulations.

"I understand the impatience of some people," Estes said. "It does seem like a long time." But UNL must abide by the federal process, he said. "Our absolute goal is to repatriate all Native American materials as expeditiously as possible." Scott Barta, a Ho-Chunk from the Winnebago Reservation and organizer of Thursday's spiritual walk, said he'd petition the university to return remains to spiritual adviser Emmet Eastman of the Dakota Nation.

"It's my responsibility to deliver them where they belong and bury them in dignity and pride," Eastman said.

Details of many remains in university possession recently have been published in the Federal Register, which is required by law before tribes can claim them. If there are no competing claims during a 30-day waiting period, the appropriate tribe can then receive them, UNL officials said.

"We don't want to return them to whoever speaks up first," said UNL's Estes, who had not received any claims from Eastman.

Thursday's storm sirens nearly drowned out the drum beats, but not the group's spirit. Bordeaux said he saw the vision of a bald eagle within the clouds -- a good sign.

"Our messages were taken to the Great Creator," he said.

Still, frustrations remain, particularly after the latest bone discovery.

Estes said the bone fragment would be examined by an independent physical anthropologist or osteologist to determine its origin.

Until then, it is being held by University Police. All other remains are in a special campus storage basement until the legal hurdles are cleared.

"This is a very sad day and shameful chapter," said Tim Rinne of Nebraskans for Peace. "We have taken so much from Native Americans, and now we don't even let them have their bones. It's a simple human rights issue."

Bones Date First American: Ancient Woman's Thigh Bones Unearthed
c. ABCNEWS 4/12/99

L O S A N G E L E S - Bones of a woman found on California *fs Channel Islands may be among the oldest human remains found so far in North America, and could support theories that the first Americans came by sea rather than over a land bridge. The two thigh bones were unearthed 40 years ago on Santa Rosa Island off Santa Barbara and languished in storage until scientists used newer techniques to test their age, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The findings added to other recent discoveries that are forcing anthropologists to rethink the theory that humans arrived in North American about 11,500 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

Oldest in North America

The bones of the so-called Arlington Springs woman are probably 13,000 years old, 1,400 years older than previously thought. That would make her slightly older than the oldest known human skeletons in North America, which were found in Montana, Idaho and Texas. Bottom line is she may be the earliest inhabitant of North America we have discovered. "It's a find of national significance," said John R. Johnson, curator of anthropology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which is part of a team researching the woman's bones. However, results of the team*fs investigation have not yet been submitted to peers for critical review and have not been published in scientific journals. The work was described in a paper presented March 30 at the Fifth California Islands Symposium at the museum.

By Land or By Sea?

The traditional theory has been the first humans in North America came from northern Asia during the Ice Age, crossing a bridge of exposed land to Alaska and then spreading across country between glaciers. The location and apparent age of the Channel Islands discovery suggests at least some of the first settlers could have come to North America by boat, possibly from Polynesia or South Asia, and spread along the coast, instead of inland, researchers contend. The remains two thigh bones were discovered at Arlington Canyon on Santa Rosa Island and kept at the Santa Barbara museum. Recently, researchers at the museum and Channel Islands National Park conducted DNA and radiocarbon tests unavailable when the bones were found. The tests were performed by Stafford Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colo., one of the nation's pre-eminent carbon-dating labs. Scientists performed two sets of tests, one producing an estimate the bones are 11,000 years old and a second giving an age of about 13,000 years, the Times said. Other ancient remains dug up around the United States have also sparked controversy because the skeletons do not resemble those of modern Native Americans but of Caucasoid peoples instead.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Struggle over Indian's brain pits tribe against museum
By Andrew Quinn c. Reuters April 15, 1999

SAN FRANCISCO, - In a macabre struggle harking back to a brutal period in U.S. history, a group of California Indians are petitioning the country's leading museum for custody of a 100-year-old brain.

The brain in question once belonged to Ishi, who walked out of the wilderness and into history books in 1911 as "the last wild man in America'' -- the sole surviving member of his Yahi tribe and the last California Indian known to have lived a life untouched by modern civilisation.

Ishi's story has long been taught in California schools, a rare example of life in ``the Golden State'' before the arrival of white settlers, bounty hunters and white man's diseases. He lived out his days in a San Francisco anthropology museum, studied in life and dissected in death on an autopsy table.

That his brain was removed in that autopsy was known. But what happened to it had long been a mystery -- until this year when two researchers tracked it down in a jar of formaldehyde as part of a research collection belonging to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

Now a California Indian group is demanding that the brain be handed over for a proper burial, a move they say will help to redress past wrongs and restore some measure of dignity to Ishi's memory.

But the U.S. national museum says it cannot send the brain back to California until it determines who has the best claim to it -- a vexing question, given that Ishi's own tribe did not survive the arrival of large-scale white migration.

"The Smithsonian is fully committed to the repatriation of Ishi's brain, but we can't just snap our fingers and dispense with a specimen that belongs in the national collection. That would be capricious and that would be abrogation of our duty as a national museum,'' museum spokesman Randall Kremer said.

THE LAST OF THE YAHIS

Ishi's story began before the turn of the century as Indian tribes in California were being pushed further and further into the margins by Gold Rush settlers from the eastern states.

His tribe, the Yahi, once numbered approximately 3,000 in the Sierra foothills around Oroville, about 140 miles (220 km) northeast of San Francisco. But most were slaughtered by "Indian hunters'' in 1865 in what became known as the Three Knolls Massacre, leaving a handful in hiding.

Cattlemen, clearing the area for their herds, killed the remaining Yahi one by one as they were flushed from the bush.

On Aug. 29, 1911, long after the last survivors were thought to have vanished, Ishi was found, starved and cowering, in a corral. He was quickly thrown in jail, but anthropologists at the University of California-Berkeley heard of the discovery and he was brought to San Francisco for further study as "the last wild man in America.''

He lived the rest of his life at the university's San Francisco museum, teaching anthropologists about the Yahi's language, beliefs and arts. But he remained susceptible to the new diseases brought by the European settlers and in 1916 he died of tuberculosis. The scientists who had been in charge of Ishi dutifully recorded that an autopsy had been conducted on his body and the brain removed.

BRAIN'S WHEREABOUTS A MYSTERY FOR 80 YEARS

While his body was later cremated and the remains buried at Colma, south of San Francisco, the whereabouts of his brain remained a mystery for eight decades until Indians in Butte County began a drive to locate all of Ishi's remains and return them for burial in the wilderness area named for him in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Intrigued, research historian Nancy Rockafellar at the University of California-San Francisco searched in books for clues. She later enlisted help from Orin Starn, a Duke University anthropologist researching Ishi, and the two finally hit pay dirt in the records of the Smithsonian.

Correspondence between Ishi's "guardians'' and Smithsonian staff in 1916 showed his brain had been transferred to Washington to become part of a collection of 300 human brains used to study whether there was a correlation between brain weight and body weight in humans.

At some point, it was moved to a warehouse in suburban Suitland, Maryland, where it has sat for decades bathed in preservatives in a tank.

The discovery of Ishi's brain sent a frisson of anger through the Butte County Indian group, which frequently notes that, according to Indian belief, a person's spirit cannot be free unless his or her body is buried whole.

They began a repatriation process under the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires federally funded institutions to return Indian remains in their possession to the individual's lineal or tribal descendants.

But they quickly ran into a basic problem. Because they are not members of Ishi's Yahi tribe, which is extinct, they do not have a clear legal claim on his brain. "The Smithsonian told us that they are not in a position to give (the brain) to us because they must investigate other claims,'' said Lorraine Frasier, a member of the Butte group.

SLEUTHING FOR THE BRAIN

Kremer, the Smithsonian spokesman, said the museum was confident a thorough review of the available anthropological data would eventually reveal where the brain should go and that it would end up in California, one way or another.

"The Smithsonian is quite well schooled in making determinations like this .... this is a little bit of detective work. This is sleuthing,'' Kremer said.

But while the museum sends its "repatriation director'' to California in an effort to discover which tribe, if any, meets the Smithsonian's standards for cultural or ethnic affiliation to the Yahi, anger is growing in the state as newspapers and politicians join the chorus demanding the brain's return.

"The government has a moral responsibility to reunite Ishi's brain and ashes so his spirit will rest in peace, according to custom,'' the San Francisco Chronicle said in an editorial, a call echoed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The San Jose Mercury News, in a more direct jab at the Smithsonian, accused the museum of letting Ishi's brain moulder "in a jar like some mad scientist's knickknack.''

"Smithsonian officials ought not pour salt on old wounds,'' the newspaper said in an editorial. "The Yahi no longer exist, and we all know why. Ishi's brain should be passed into Indian hands immediately so that it can get the respectful interment that's long overdue.''

1,500-year-old mummified baby found in Argentina
c. Reuters April 15, 1999

BUENOS AIRES -- Argentine archaeologists have discovered the mummy of a baby wrapped in leather and straw in a cave in the northwestern province of Catamarca, where the dry Andean mountain air preserved it for 1,500 to 2,000 years.

"The baby seems to be have been no more than 4 months old. It died of natural causes and was buried in a leather wrapping," Carlos Aschero, head of the Institute of Archaeology of Tucuman University, told Reuters in an interview on Thursday.

The mummy was discovered unexpectedly when scientists X-rayed a bundle of leather and straw found 11,800 feet (3,600 metres) above sea level in a volcanic cave in Antofagasta, in the Andes in Argentina's far northwest.

"We only realised what it was when X-rays were done and showed the shape of the baby. We had this bundle, but we did not really know what it contained," Aschero said.

"It's in very good shape and was mummified naturally by the extremely dry climate. It was covered in straw over the leather wrapping and the straw and dry weather helped conserve it."

The find comes amid archaeological excitement in Argentina about the discovery of the mummies of three children sacrificed to Inca gods on an icy mountaintop in the nearby province of Salta. They date back 500 years to the Inca empire.

Near the Catamarca mummy, archaeologists found two small baskets made of vegetable fibers. One was coloured, and the other contained the remains of what appeared to be a food offering.

Argentine scientists estimate the new mummy's age at 1,500 to 2,000 years but say carbon dating tests and DNA tests should determine its age more precisely. Those tests may be carried out in the University of Georgia in the United States, Aschero said.

He also wants to study the mummy to find out more about its diet. "It could tell us whether the diet was based on meat or agricultural elements and indicate what the economy of the culture was based on," he said.

Aschero said such information would bring a wealth of new knowledge to the study of the early inhabitants of the north of Argentina and their agriculture and pottery.

Redeeming a sacrifice

By Faye Flam c. Philadelphia Inquirer 4/18/99

Five hundred years after they were sacrificed to the gods, the mummified bodies of three children may tell us much about the Inca people and the history of disease.

Last week's announcement that the bodies of three Inca children were found frozen in a 500-year-old mountaintop tomb excited not only archaeologists, but pathologists, who want to perform autopsies and extract samples of DNA.

Scientists hope the well-preserved bodies will yield new information about the lives of the Incas, who took over much of South America during the 1400s, built beautiful temples, devised a sophisticated system of government and sometimes sacrificed their children.

The bodies may also help scientists interested in tracing the history of epidemic diseases that ravaged old and new world people.

The three bodies, two girls and a boy, were found atop a 22,000-foot peak, surrounded by gold and silver statues, pottery and food offerings. They appeared to have been killed as a sacrifice to the Inca gods.

The exceptionally arid and cold climate of the Andes Mountains and Atacama desert where the Incas lived is ideal for preserving bodies and thousands of naturally freeze-dried mummies have been found. The three children are the first that appeared to have frozen before their bodies became dehydrated and shriveled, better preserving their outward features and internal organs and blood. Johan Reinhard, the head of the National Geographic exploration team that found them, said he could even see the downy hairs on the children's arms.

CAT scans done in Argentina, where the bodies reside now, hinted that the heart and lungs were still filled with blood that might retain enough DNA to trace the relationships of the children to one another and to their modern descendants.

The presence of blood "opens up a whole new window for research," said Arthur Aufderheide, a University of Minnesota pathologist who has studied mummified bodies from around the world.

Discoverer Reinhard made another highly publicized find in 1996 of an Inca girl of about 13, also apparently sacrificed about 1500. Her body was taken to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

There pathologist Patricia Charache examined the body, which was brought in a specially designed freezer, still wearing an elaborate, multicolored wool dress.

"It was very difficult to study her," said Charache. "Her hands were crossed in front of her chest and her knees were crossed," she said, in what appeared to be a classic sacrificial position.

Initially, archaeologists thought this body, sometimes called the Ice Maiden, or Juanita, might have been drugged and then buried alive, or perhaps poisoned, but a CAT scanning revealed a fracture on her cheek bone. Further examination showed her brain had been pushed to one side of her skull, indicating she had been clubbed to death, apparently as part of a mountaintop ritual. The body was stiff and cold, said Charache, but she was able to get some bone samples from the girl's knee, showing that Juanita had been about 13 and was healthy. When it came to Inca human sacrifice, "they apparently chose people the gods would like," she said.

Charache examined the contents of Juanita's stomach to find she had eaten a meal shortly before her sacrifice - one with vegetables and no meat. She said she hopes scientists will be able to look further into the digestive tracts of the newly found bodies, which will give a more complete picture of their diets.

Pathologist Aufderheide is also interested in looking at the blood left in the bodies of the three children for antibodies that would indicate which diseases infected them during their short lives. He has examined dozens of bodies from South Americans, who died before the time of Christopher Columbus, looking for signs of diseases that affected ancient cultures.

With other bodies, Aufderheide has sifted through DNA samples, seeking strands of DNA belonging to the bacteria that causes tuberculosis. Before that work, he said, scientists didn't know whether TB was introduced by Europeans. Finding it in the native populations showed that "Columbus wasn't responsible after all," he said.

Aufderheide said he hopes his work and that of other so-called paleopathologists will lead to a better understanding of the way TB seems to cycle up and down over the centuries and affect different types of people at different times. Perhaps, he said, his findings will have applications in combatting TB in the modern world.

He has also examined bodies for a parasite that causes a deadly infection known as Chagas' disease, which still affects about 15 million people in Latin American countries. Other scientists have found signs of a bacteria similar to the one that causes syphilis, though researchers still disagree over the origin of that disease.

If, as it appears with the children, some hair is preserved, Aufderheide said he can use it to get more information, especially on diet and drug use. The Incas and other South Americans used to chew the leaves of the coca plant - which yields cocaine. But chewing the leaves didn't have a strong mood-altering effect, he said. "They were not a bunch of druggies." Instead, it appears to have been used for ceremonial purposes and as a painkiller. It also numbed the stomach, he said, and the Incas used it to ease hunger pangs they suffered after they were captured by the Spanish, who invaded during the early 1500s.

While Juanita and these newly discovered bodies are called mummies, they are simply preserved by the elements. But some of the more ancient cultures in South America, dating back further than 5,000 years, did mummify people, Aufderheide said. They used a complicated procedure by which they removed the skin, scraped away muscle and internal organs, replaced them with mud and plant matter, and sewed the skin back on. "It was almost like a doll," he said. Some looked as though they'd been repaired, as if someone had gotten them out and used them for some sort of ceremony.

Aufderheide has also practiced paleopathology in Italy, where he measured lead in the bodies of ancient Romans and helped establish that they ingested enough lead from their wine pitchers and other vessels to experience symptoms of lead poisoning. Whether that caused the fall of the Roman Empire remains open to debate.

Aufderheide said that just 25 years ago, people didn't think about studying mummies. "Art museums were interested in the containers they came in," he said, but no one thought the mummies themselves carried valuable information.

"We've gradually made this a legitimate scientific discipline."

The greatest wealth of information might come from DNA, which contains the genetic code, but this code gets degraded over time, and scientists have long faced an impossible task in trying to use the tiny amounts left in ancient bodies. "You are working with a half-rotten soup of broken-down proteins," said Aufderheide. And in that, less than 1 percent of the original DNA remains, he said. However, scientists are constantly improving the technology for working with DNA. Today, they can multiply tiny traces into easily usable quantities, he said.

Learning to get more information from less DNA may help pathologists to study truly ancient mummies and frozen people, such as the famous ice man who was found in the Austrian Alps in 1991, approximately 5,000 years after his death. While he's perhaps the most famous preserved human, he's not the oldest. That distinction goes to the 9,000-year-old body of an American Indian man that was preserved in Spirit Cave in the arid desert of Nevada, said Aufderheide. Scientists began to study the body, he said, but their work was interrupted by legal order, after American Indians in the area argued that the remains were sacred.

Return of remains moves slowly
By Nancy Lofholm Denver Post April 18, 1999

The Ute infant, cushioned in woven grass and tied in a cradle board with leather thongs, has been dead for almost 150 years. She was once displayed in a plexiglass case in the Delta County Historical Society Museum, but this summer she will ceremonially be given a final resting place in a donated plot at the Delta Municipal Cemetery.

The burial of her remains and the bones of an adult male Indian who died near Montrose in the last century marks one of the few success stories in Colorado efforts to repatriate the thousands of remains of Indians stored in museums, universities and land-management agency warehouses.

Federal legislation passed in 1990 mandated that those remains be returned to the proper tribes for reburial. The Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act gave agencies and institutions in possession of the remains and burial artifacts until 1995 to submit inventories to the National Park Service before the actual repatriations would begin.

But since then, there have been only a handful of repatriations in Colorado. More remains are continually being found in construction sites and archaeological excavations than are being reburied.

"We expected it to go much faster when they passed the law. No one knew how many there were,'' said Joan Bernstein of the University of Denver.

Bernstein and others dealing with the repatriation act say there are many reasons why so few remains are being returned to tribes for reburial.

So many tribes historically called Colorado home that it has been very difficult tracing the lineage of remains to specific tribes, as the law requires.

The Colorado Historical Society has consulted with more than 30 tribes in an attempt to establish that lineage and return some of the approximately 600 remains the society has warehoused in boxes and cedar caskets.

Carolyn McArthur, the society's coordinator for the repatriation act, said few of the tribal representatives brought in for consultations have opted to go through the process and claim remains.

Some tribes don't have any tradition of reburial or ceremonies for reburying remains. Some have spiritual taboos against handling remains.

The tribes also don't have the resources to deal with the complex legalities of the repatriation act. They don't have paid repatriation coordinators, as many institutions do, and some tribes have been inundated with hundreds of repatriation queries from museums, universities and government agencies.

Tribes often don't have the financial means to transport remains and to find burial sites. Most believe the remains should be reburied where they were found, but many times that isn't possible. For example, the infant who will be reburied in the Delta cemetery was found in an area that is now a cow pasture and is adjacent to heavy recreational foot traffic.

In some cases, repatriating remains simply is not a high priority for tribes.

"I would say tribes don't have the interest to get the bones back,'' said Roland McCook, vice chairman of the Northern Ute Tribal Council. McCook said he finally re sponded to years of requests from the historical society regarding the Delta baby's remains because no one else seemed interested.

"Like with every complex law, these cases require a lot of time and thought. Each case has to be viewed independently from others, and a lot of tribes are just not up to speed on the repatriation act,'' McArthur said.

Deword Walker, a University of Colorado professor of anthropology and Native American studies, faults the institutions and agencies holding the remains more than the tribes for dragging out the repatriation process.

"They seem to think the tribes should drop everything and come running, but it is often beyond their means,'' Walker said.

He said he has seen cases where archaeologists "who don't know any living In dians'' have made it impossible for tribes to claim remains because they demand more proof than the law requires to establish a lineal connection between remains and modern tribes. He said they also take advantage of the tribes' lack of resources.

"There are good people who want to repatriate bones, and there are some academics who would like to see older bones kept for scientific purposes,'' Walker said. "Anthropology is on trial here, and Native Americans are the jury.''

LouAnn Jacobson, director of the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores, where the remains of 402 Pueblans found on U.S. Bureau of Land Management land in Colorado are warehoused, said the repatriation process has been slow because it has been underfunded. Also, many agencies and institutions haven't been able to work diligently enough with tribes to understand their cultural needs.

In spite of these problems, Jacobson said she believes most of the remains will be returned to tribes and returned to graves in the next several years.

The planned repatriation in Delta this summer is seen as an example of how it can work.

The Northern Utes didn't have a place to bury the remains, so the city of Delta donated a cemetery plot on land that was home to the Northern Utes before they were forced to relocate to northeastern Utah 120 years ago. That donation is a first in repatriation efforts in Colorado.

Jim Wetzel, curator of the Delta museum where the Ute baby's remains were once displayed, said it's the right thing to do.

"We believe these remains should be buried where the spirit rests,'' Wetzel said.

Tribes Seek Tougher Grave Law
.c The Associated Press By PHILIP BRASHER 4/20/99

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Thousands of Indian remains and sacred artifacts haven't been returned to tribes because of delays by museums and loopholes in a federal grave-protection law, a Senate committee was told Tuesday.

Some 14,000 human remains out of 200,000 identified nationally have been returned to tribes under the 1990 law, authorities say. Many of the remains that haven't been returned can't be identified by tribe.

But tribal leaders told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act is too narrowly written, and the National Park Service has too little money and staff to enforce it.

"We will not rest until we have brought each of our relatives home and buried them,'' said Tex Hall, chairman of North Dakota's Three Affiliated Tribes.

The law covered remains and artifacts held by federal agencies and federally funded institutions or excavated from federal land.

Hall worries that the law won't protect remains or artifacts at hundreds of sites where his tribal ancestors lived along the Missouri River in South Dakota. The sites are on land the federal government is turning over to South Dakota's state government under a law enacted last year.

In another case, a Maryland college sold at auction a hair-fringed buckskin shirt that purportedly belonged to the Sioux leader Crazy Horse. Washington College of Chestertown, Md., claimed it wasn't covered by the law.

A lawyer representing Crazy Horse's descendants told the committee the college sold the shirt without responding to his requests to determine whether it was authentic or if it was protected by the law. The auction house did not identify the buyer.

"The shirt for all intents and purposes is gone, and we don't know where,'' said attorney Robert Gough, a member of South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux Tribe.

The descendants filed a federal lawsuit against the college earlier this month and also have asked the National Park Service to penalize the private school.

College officials issued a statement Tuesday that maintained they "acted in full compliance'' with the law and are cooperating with federal officials investigating Gough's allegations. The shirt was cleared for auction by the U.S. attorney's office in New York.

Spokesmen for organizations of museums and archaeologists told the committee the law is working as intended, but they agreed with the tribal leaders that it should be broadened beyond federal lands.

"Repatriations of human remains and cultural items, from both museum collections and new excavations, occur regularly,'' said Keith Kintigh, president of the Society for American Archaeology. "Most of these repatriations result from mutual agreements between tribes and museums and agencies.''

Bones of Contention
Controversy surrounds the skeleton of Kennewick Man, and a UNM paleontologist is trying to sort it out
By John Fleck c. Albuquerque Journa April 18, 1999

When the 9,000-year-old Kennewick Man's ancestors came to this continent, and where his descendants are now, remains a mystery. But slowly, the ancient skeleton is giving up his secrets. In the process, the bones found along the banks of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Wash., in 1996 could help scientists sort out who the first Americans were, where they came from, and when. Scientists say humans have been in the Americas for at least 12,500 years, and a recent study suggests one skeleton from California might be as much as 13,000 years old. But much about the first humans' arrival remains controversial. In February, University of New Mexico paleontologist Joe Powell led a team of scientists that performed the first detailed analysis of the ancient bones >from Kennewick. They painstakingly measured them, trying to sort out the subtle differences that distinguish groups of humans. Their primary goal is to help federal officials determine whether the ancient man is related to modern Native Americans, and therefore, whether the skeleton should be reburied by one of the tribes living near where it was found. It's a difficult task.

Where does he belong?

Powell's specialty is categorizing groups of people based on the characteristic shapes of their skulls, things like their cheekbones or the bridge of their nose. Sitting in a UNM classroom discussing his work, Powell moved his hands over casts of skulls, explaining the difference between the long European nose, adapted for cold weather, and the broader African nose. It's that skill that prompted the federal government to bring Powell into the Kennewick Man case, to try to resolve a dilemma. Federal law requires repatriation of ancient human remains to the Native American tribes, with the idea that descendants should be allowed to bury their dead. But Kennewick Man has confounded the government's efforts. Initial reports, based on Kennewick Man's bone structure, suggested he might have been of European origin. That complicated the idea of repatriating the remains to the Umatilla Tribe or other area Native American groups. If true, it also would have radically changed scientists' ideas of who the first Americans were, and where they might have come from, because conventional scientific wisdom said Native Americans' ancestors were Asian. Analysis of the skull shows Kennewick Man is not European, Powell said. The skull shares features of a number of different modern groups, something commonly found in the analysis of ancient remains, he said. That's because evolution and the movement of populations means modern humans are different than their ancestors. Over the past 10,000 years, he said, people have changed. But regardless of whether Kennewick Man's family tree can be reconstructed, he remains an important piece of a puzzle that has become jumbled in recent years as old ideas about what scientists call "the peopling of the Americas" are thrown out and a new, more complex picture begins to emerge.

Shaking things up

Scientific evidence suggests humans are recent arrivals in the Americas. Evolving several hundred thousand years ago, possibly in Africa, humans spread across Europe and Asia, where fossils of human ancestors have been found spanning the last 100,000 years. But no evidence of human presence is found in the record of the Americas until a little more than 10,000 years ago. Where did they come from? How did they get here? Until recently, the dominant theory was built around discoveries made in the 1930s at a place called Blackwater Draw near Clovis in eastern New Mexico. Evidence of the so-called "Clovis culture," characterized by distinctive spear points and dated from 10,900 to 11,500 years, was soon found throughout North America. It appeared to show up suddenly, and led anthropologists to theorize that the first Americans crossed a land bridge from Asia and then headed south as the last ice age was ending, about 12,000 years ago. Facing open land with abundant food, the theory suggested, the first Americans rapidly colonized the Americas. "We were pretty sure we knew when humans got here," Powell said. But over the last several decades, cracks began appearing in the Clovis model. Archaeological sites were found that seemed older than Clovis, and evidence from genetics and studies of modern Native American languages seemed to suggest humans came to the Americas much earlier. The clinching evidence came together in 1997, when a group of archaeologists visited a site in Chile called Monte Verde, and agreed that it had been occupied by humans 12,500 years ago -- a thousand years before Clovis. That changed everything. To get to Chile would have taken time. How much time is unclear, but it clearly required humans to have arrived long before the age of Clovis culture. "Somebody was here before Clovis," said University of Arizona anthropologist Stephen Zegura. "We know that. We've got Monte Verde." "They (early Americans) had to have been in the land bridge at 15,000 to 20,000 years ago," Powell said. Preliminary results of a recent study suggest a skeleton found 40 years ago on an island off California's coast could be 13,000 years old. While the date hasn't been confirmed by other researchers as Monte Verde has, it's consistent with the theory that humans crossed the Bering Strait sometime before and migrated south along the coast to get to Monte Verde, said David Meltzer of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Common ancestors

The other thing that has changed in our ideas of the peopling of the Americas, based on the work of Powell and others, is our idea of what the first Americans looked like. They don't look like modern Native Americans, said Powell, who has studied most of the more than 30 ancient American skeletons that have been found. Based on bone and tooth structure, the closest modern group resembling the ancient American skeletons is Polynesian. "This looks very much like the Kennewick skull," Powell said recently, holding up a plastic cast of a modern human skull of a person who was Polynesian. It doesn't appear they could have come here from Polynesia, Powell said, because there's no evidence of human culture in Polynesia until about 3,000 years ago. But it does suggest ancient Native Americans and Polynesians might have had a common Asian ancestor, he said. Pinning down when the first Americans came and who they were remains a problem, in large measure because the Americas are so large, and there must have been so few in the first groups of immigrants, Meltzer said. "We're talking about a relatively small population coming into a continent the size of the western hemisphere," the anthropologist said.

Pressed for time

Estimates based on studying today's Native American languages and trying to determine how long it would have taken their differences to evolve have put the date of the first Americans' arrival at more than 30,000 years ago. But those studies are in dispute, because they are based on inferences about the speed and nature of language evolution. "The linguistics contains too many uncertainties to give a date in itself," said Daniel Nettle of Merton College in Oxford, England. Studying the genetic material of modern Native Americans has been used in a similar way to try to date the timing and pace of migration into the Americas, but that, too, has been surrounded in scientific controversy. Kennewick Man will not resolve the scientific debate, Powell said. But as pressure mounts to rebury ancient remains, Powell and other scientists feel pressed to work quickly and try to collect as much data as they can to try to resolve the question. It's a delicate task, Powell said, as they try to juggle their desire to do research with what Powell sees as legitimate Native American concerns about respecting the remains of what might be their ancestors. "I understand where they're coming from," he said. Still, he understands that time for the work that he must do is fleeting. "I'm sort of racing the clock," Powell said.

Archaeologist Works to Save Burial Site
BY BRANDON LOOMIS THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

FARMINGTON -- A lifelong volunteer archaeologist who helped identify an American Indian grave in Davis County wants to protect it from Bonneville Shoreline Trail construction.

The grave belongs to the daughter of Little Soldier, a Northwestern Shoshoni chief whose band of 400 was the first encountered by Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley.

George Tripp, who brought attention to the grave in 1963 and helped dedicate a memorial in 1989, wants a fence to protect the site from construction crews and others where the trail comes within 10 feet.

The grave is under a rock pile three miles north of the Davis County Courthouse, on a Wasatch Range bench at the former level of Lake Bonneville. It lies under a slope of white and rust-colored rocks mixed among brush, and would not be noticeable except for a small plaque dedicated by the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society, the U.S. Forest Service and the Boy Scouts.

Tom Scott, formerly the Wasatch-Cache National Forest's archaeologist and now working in forest planning, agreed that the site should be protected. But he added it could be improved to make it a valuable educational site along the new trail.

"It would be a good piece of work as part of trail promotion," Scott said. "It's not something to hide."

Tripp learned about the site in 1963 while helping University of Utah archaeologists survey Farmington Bay for artifacts. The manager of the Farmington Bay waterfowl preserve knew of the grave site, and arranged for Tripp to see it, along with one of Little Soldier's great-granddaughters, Florence Garcia.

In talking with Davis County residents who had known about the grave for years, Tripp learned that residents had found and removed parts of at least three skeletons from the site, indicating that it might have been a traditional burial area. Some Farmington boys apparently had brought home skulls as souvenirs, but were ordered to return them.

Then Tripp found a May 4, 1861, Deseret News article saying, "On Saturday last, a young squaw, daughter of Little Soldier, died in his camp near the Point of the Mountain between Salt Lake City and Lehi. The body was taken north for interment on some creek or ravine in the vicinity of Farmington."

Tripp said family members verified the location and told him the woman was buried with her live infant because women in the band were unable to nurse, so the baby would have starved anyway. A strangled horse also is buried, evidently for use by the woman when she passed into the spirit world.

According to legend, the woman died in childbirth after being cursed by a former suitor. When she had married a young man instead of the older shaman who had pursued her, the shaman told her she would die when her first child was born, Tripp said.

The rocks and plaque are on the east side of the Davis County trail that is to become part of the Lehi-Ogden Bonneville Shoreline Trail for hikers, bikers and horse riders. The trail already is wide and relatively smooth at the site, but Davis County may make unspecified improvements throughout the area.

Tripp said the county should protect the grave from grading or rock removal before improvements are made. Construction workers might borrow from the rock pile without knowing what they are doing, he said.

During a trip to the site Monday afternoon, Tripp discovered small-caliber bullet holes in a Plexiglas sheet over the plaque -- evidence of the threat from vandals.

Davis County commissioners agreed that the site should be protected and assigned County Planner Jeff Oyler to visit the grave and recommend any necessary actions. And they agreed the site's historic value should be played up.

"That could be an interesting detour off the trail," said Commissioner Carol Page.

Navajos shun return of burial plunder
Remains, artifacts are left in museums
By Bill Donovan Special for The Republic April 19, 1999

WINDOW ROCK -- For almost 50 years in the late 1800s and early 1900s, museums >from across the country paid archaeologists to excavate Southwestern Indian burial sites, collecting tens of thousands of human remains and a huge assortment of pottery, crafts and sacred items buried with the bodies.

But while most tribes in recent years have been working with museums to get these items returned to their homelands, officials for the Navajo Nation have been taking a cautious position.

They're saying that -- at least for now -- they would just as soon allow these items to remain in the museums.

And this is despite the fact that the tribe is now beginning to talk about putting up permanent exhibits at its new $8 million museum, library and tourist center.

"We have been advised by hatathlie (medicine men) to be careful about what we ask to be returned by the museums because they do not want anything exhibited at the museum that was removed from a burial site," said Richard M. Begay, head of the tribe's Traditional Cultural Program.

The same attitude also seems to pertain to the thousands of human remains that were collected by museums for research. While other tribes have worked with museums like the Smithsonian and the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff to get the human remains returned for reburial, Navajo officials say that their medicine men and reservation communities have expressed no desire to do so.

The reason, said Begay, stems from Navajo traditions that require Navajos to have nothing to do with death, either directly or indirectly. Coming in contact with anything connected with human remains, even with a pot buried with the body, requires the person to go to a medicine man and have an expensive ceremony performed.

And while museums usually have detailed records of where the remains were excavated, Begay said that communities on the reservation have told the tribe that they do not want the remains reburied "in their back yards."

"There has been some talk about creating a cemetery on the reservation to rebury the remains, but so far no community has indicated a willingness to have it located in their area," Begay said.

Stuart Speaker, who works with tribes on issues of repatriation for the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., said the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, which started the whole movement to return the items to the tribes, doesn't require the tribes to take the items.

"We're willing to work with the tribes to return the items," he said. "Or if they want us to keep storing them, we're willing to do that as well."

The remains have been a valuable tool for scientists, who have used data collected from examining the bones to learn about the lifestyles and history of the early inhabitants of the United States. These include the average lifespan of early Native Americans, diseases prevalent during their lives and even, to a certain extent, what kinds of foods they ate.

Even smaller museums, such as the Museum of Northern Arizona, collected human remains in the early part of this century for study, although museum officials say no research is currently being conducted with the remains they now have stored.

"What we have been telling the museums is to take care of the remains and see that they are stored properly," said Begay, who added that the tribe doesn't have to worry about the remains being exhibited as they were in many museums up to just a decade ago; federal law now prohibits exhibiting human remains.

Gloria Lomahaftewa, assistant to the director for Native American Relations at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, said other tribes have also indicated that they want to hold off return of cultural items.

"Some tribes want to wait until they have time to consult with their elders," she said. "Other tribes are not sure what to do because maybe the ceremony for which the object was used isn't done anymore. And other tribes just may not have the financial resources to take care of them."

The only cultural items the Navajos have been active in bringing home are the medicine bundles that were used by old-time medicine men.

The bundles, which contain sacred items like corn pollen and eagle feathers, were used by the medicine men in healing ceremonies and were at one time actively being acquired by museums and private collectors.

Dr. Dave Wilcox, director of anthropology at the Museum of Northern Arizona, said the museum returns medicine bundles to the tribe once efforts have been made to contact the person who donated the bundles to the museum.

"It's been hard at times to find these people, but if we make a good-faith effort to locate them and then can't, we go ahead and proceed with returning the medicine bundle to the tribe," he said.

But even here the tribe has been cautious in determining what it wants returned, Begay said, because the bundles do not go to the museum but are turned over to practicing medicine men who can use them in their ceremonies.

"This becomes difficult if the medicine bundle was used for a ceremony that is no longer practiced," Begay said. "If that happens, we have to store it until we can figure what to do with it."

In addition, "the medicine bundles are still in demand by private collectors," Begay said, "even though it's against the law to purchase them."

He said collectors search border-town newspapers for obituaries of medicine man, and it's not unusual for relatives to get offers -- sometimes for hundreds of dollars -- for the deceased's medicine bundle.

"We're trying to educate the people to turn these bundles back to the tribe so that we can find someone who will be able to use them," he said.

"If we can't, the objects in the bundles will be returned to their natural state after a ceremony has been conducted."

Bird bones indicate possible human presence in Ice Age Yukon
c. Canadian Museum of Nature April 20, 1999

New research shows that first North Americans had opportunity to be avid birders

Zooarcheologists use modern bones of known origin to identify fossil bones, as shown in this comparison of fossil and modern golden plover bones from the Bluefish Caves. New research reinforces the belief that the Yukon could have been a comfortable home to the first North Americans at least 25,000 years ago, and likely, much earlier. The findings indicate that an Ice Age region known as Eastern Beringia, now the northwestern Yukon, was rich with potentially human-sustaining animal life at a time when much of Canada and the northern United States was covered with kilometre-thick glacial ice.

Conducted by scientists from the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian Museum of Nature, the research results will be presented as part of a day-long symposium on Eastern Beringian Studies, on Friday, April 30, in Whitehorse, Yukon. The symposium is a component of the Canadian Archaeological Association's 32nd Annual Meeting.

The new Beringian evidence comes in the form of hundreds of tiny migratory bird bones collected in the Bluefish Caves, an archeologically rich group of three caves located about 50 kilometres southwest of Old Crow, Yukon, near the Alaskan border. The avian bones indicate the presence of at least 18 species of migratory birds in the area over a period from about 25,000 to 10,000 years ago.

"When these birds arrived there was an environment productive enough for them to feed and breed. And the evidence of juvenile bones indicates that these migratory birds were breeding successfully in Eastern Beringia," says Darlene McCuaig-Balkwill, a zooarcheologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature. Darlene McCuaig-Balkwill, zooarcheologist with the Canadian Museum of Nature, looks through a dissecting microscope to identify bones.

The species identified would be familiar to present day Canadian birders. They include the red-tailed hawk, a fly-catcher, a redpoll, a waxwing, the snowy and hawk owls, and several species of swallows and plovers. The bones also include the earliest evidence in North America of a snow bunting, as well as the earliest record in Canada of a snow goose, a phoebe, and the American widgeon.

The high diversity of birds at this single site during and shortly after the height of the last glacial period contradicts earlier ideas that the region was a marginal habitat.

"The richness of the avian fauna reflects an environmental richness," says McCuaig-Balkwill. "For example, there was not just one species of shorebird but four different ones indicating a variety of feeding niches in the region."

This conclusion is supported by a plethora of contemporaneous mammalian remains from the site, including those of mammoth, bison, horse, dall sheep, caribou, moose, wapiti, saiga antelope, lion, bear and cougar. Researchers found this humerus (upper wing bone) of a juvenile swallow from the late Pleistocene period in Cave 1. The Bluefish Caves site was discovered in 1975 and excavated between 1978 and 1987 by a research team led by Canadian Museum of Civilization archeologist Jacques Cinq-Mars. The Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse showcases the results of this and other Eastern Beringian research.

The bird and mammal material found at the site is particularly valuable in that it forms the largest and most complex 'in-situ', or undisturbed, Pleistocene animal bone assemblage in Eastern Beringia. The caves have yielded what may be the earliest evidence of human occupation in the Americas -- a mammoth bone probably flaked and shaped by human hands 23,500 years ago.

The caves have been protected as a historic site reserve by the Yukon government, with the support of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation.

The new bird evidence raises numerous questions both about both these flyers, and potentially, early humans in Eastern Beringia. Were the migratory birds travelling south to north over the glaciers? And, perhaps most intriguing, how long ago were the first North Americans hunting them? This snow goose scapula (shoulder blade) shows definite cut marks made by humans about 8,000 years ago. A snow goose scapula (shoulder blade) from the site, recently dated at approximately 8,000 years old, shows clear, human-made cut marks. Cinq-Mars thinks that Beringian hunters took brief shelter in the caves over a period of 15,000 years.

"You can think of a small hunting party stopping in one of these caves for an afternoon. The whole limestone ridge system where they are located serves, even today, as a perfect vantage point, overlooking the broadening of the Bluefish Valley, and if it was a rainy day, or a bad blizzard, or a freak snowstorm, they could have been used as temporary shelters," says Cinq-Mars. McCuaig-Balkwill holds a bone from an immature golden plover (her left) found in Cave 1 and a bone from a hawk owl (her right) found in Cave 2. The challenge now is to find further hard evidence that human eyes followed the probable southward migratory flight of these Eastern Beringian birds as much as 25,000 years ago... humans that would have pondered, where, over the wall of glaciers, these birds were going.

Monumental Throne Unearthed at Mayan Temple Complex
By JULIA PRESTON c. The New York Times April 22, 1999

MEXICO CITY -- In rain forests at the foot of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexican and American archaeologists have uncovered a monumental art work that appears to be one of the most revealing artifacts that has been found from the resplendent but mysterious final years of ancient Mayan civilization.

While digging through a crumbling temple at Palenque, site of some of the most refined Mayan ruins in Mesoamerica, the researchers came upon a benchlike throne more than 9 feet wide and 5 feet deep in vermillion-painted limestone, which one of the last Mayan rulers built about A.D. 760 to dazzle his subjects and convince them of his god-given right to power.

What became of the Classic Mayans, who developed the only pre-Colombian writing in the Americas and devised an intricate astronomy to chart the movements of the heavens, is one of the great puzzles of archaeology. During the ninth century, flourishing cities like Palenque were abruptly abandoned, in what seems from the record of the ruins to have been a cultural collapse.

The Palenque throne is adorned with at least 200 heiroglyphs and six sculptured portraits that, based on the experts' first reading, disclose the achievements and illusions of the Mayan nobility in the decades just before their demise.

The discovery also signifies a high point of cooperation between Mexican and American archaeologists, after a long period in which Mexico was uneasy about foreigners' digging in its pre-Hispanic sites.

To show Mexican enthusiasm for the find, President Ernesto Zedillo flew to Palenque on Wednesday to display the partly excavated throne.

The Palenque explorations are in the hands of a team led by Arnoldo Gonzalez Cruz of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City and Alfonso Morales of the University of Texas at Austin. The project is largely financed and directed by the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute of San Francisco. An art historian, Merle Greene Robertson, directs the institute.

"We're working as a group," said Morales, who has been keenly aware of Mexican sensitivities about the excavation. "No one can say, 'This is my throne, that is my temple."'

Mexican authorities suppressed all public discussion of the find for weeks to allow Zedillo to announce it.

Morales said the grandeur of the throne and the spaciousness of the palace that houses it indicate that the last rulers of Palenque were more ambitious and proud of their power than had been understood. The palace, decorated with fine stucco carvings, is even larger than another structure that had been considered the central palace at Palenque.

Down zigzagging stairways that lead into the heart of that palace, a Mayan king named Pakal built a mausoleum for himself covered with delicate carvings and inscriptions aimed at enhancing his historical reputation. The tomb has long been considered one of the greatest works of Mayan artistry.

The newly found throne belonged to a monarch descended from Pakal and is part of what is emerging as a construction program by later rulers even more extensive than that of the vainglorious Pakal. The throne carries more inscriptions laden with more historical information than any other in the Mayan world, archaeologists said.

Morales and other experts believe that mapping the grandiose building projects could be crucial to reaching a new understanding of the Maya decline. The scientists have theorized that the logging required to sustain the stucco construction may have depleted forests and compounded ecological changes, perhaps undermining agriculture and forcing the Mayans to migrate to less hospitable territory.

Pecos Ancestors' Bones Returning Home
The remains of more than 2,000 residents of the once large pueblo are being repatriated for reburial
By Miguel Navrot c. Journal May 11, 1999

SANTA FE -- The remains of more than 2,000 ancestors of the Pecos Indians are to be returned this month to northern New Mexico in what is being called the nation's largest act of repatriation. Famed archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder oversaw the excavation of the remains during several diggings between 1915 and 1929 at the Pecos Pueblo ruins, now known as the Pecos National Historical Park. Kidder, who at the time worked for Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., shipped the remains and hundreds of artifacts to the boarding school and to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University for study. Those remains have been stored at the two institutions since. Jemez Pueblo officials have spent eight years writing letters, making phone calls and holding meetings with Peabody Museum officials to get the remains returned, Second Lt. Gov. Ruben Sando said. It appears the work has paid off. On May 22, the remains are to arrive by truck at Pecos for reburial. Sando credited the work of his pueblo, as well as the Comanche, Kiowa, Apache and other tribal governments, for the return. "The whole community got into it," Sando said of the Jemez, some of whom trace their history to the Pecos Indians. "I'm not surprised we're getting the remains back, but I am grateful." Archaeologist William Whatley, preservation officer for Jemez Pueblo, said the repatriation "brings blessing." "It's an absolute feeling of joy for the Jemez people, knowing their ancestors will be allowed to be placed in harmonic balance and at peace," he said. James Bradley, director of the Robert Peabody Museum of Archaeology in Andover, said he'll be glad when the tribal leaders arrive in Andover to reclaim the skeletal remains and burial objects. "When you have 2,000 sets of someone's ancestors, I don't feel comfortable with that," he said. The repatriation of the Pecos remains began soon after the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted in 1990. Tribal leaders, with some help from the National Park Service, are expected to rebury the remains. Members of Jemez and other area pueblos will be invited to the ceremony. Plans for public attendance are in the works. People with Flintco Inc., a Native American-owned, Oklahoma-based construction company with offices in Albuquerque, will arrive in Cambridge next week to pack the remains. Ken Easley, a Flintco project manager, said J.B. Hunt Transport Services will take the remains to Pecos. Jemez Pueblo began working on the undertaking in 1991, but formal efforts for the repatriation date to 1980, Easley said. "A lot of laws have been put into place, and a lot of letters have been written," said Easley, who's helped Jemez Pueblo with the logistical side of returning the remains to Pecos. The remains have been stored in wood boxes, Easley said, most measuring a foot wide, a foot high and 2 or 3 feet long. The pueblo of Pecos, less than 30 miles southeast of Santa Fe, was the largest in the Southwest when Spanish explorer V

?squez de Coronado set out to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold in 1540. During Spanish colonization, Pecos became the seat of a mission, where an adobe church was soon built. Pecos prospered through the 1750s, when disease and nomadic raids eventually started to take their toll. In about 1838, the remaining families joined the Jemez community, according to the "Roadside History of New Mexico." Sections of the pueblo ruins were rebuilt during the 1930s as Civilian Conservation Corps projects. Parts of the adobe church still stand. The area has undergone several excavations. Kidder, who researched the site in the 1910s and '20s, described in a 1926 publication of the Museum of New Mexico's El Palacio the hundreds of skeletons he unearthed in old landfills and other places. "Burials had been made in the refuse heap from the earliest times down to about 1600 when the Mission was founded, and a Christian graveyard was established by the padres. Quantities of interments were also found on the mesa top wherever sufficient earth or culture-deposit allowed the digging of graves." Kidder wrote that many of the bones he discovered had been crushed by the weight of earth. But, he added, "many were in an excellent state of preservation."

Archeologists Find Milder Arctic Climate May Have Aided Aleutian Settlement
c.. National Science Foundation 4/28/99

A milder Arctic climate more than 3,000 years ago may have aided humans to cross the Bering Sea from Alaska and migrate into the remote Aleutian Island chain, according to preliminary findings by a three-woman research team funded by the National Science Foundation. Dixie L. West, a professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, said radiocarbon dating of bones found in an ancient midden, or refuse pit, on Shemya Island indicates that the westernmost Aleutians were settled roughly 3,500 years ago, or 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. Island soil and plant matter dated by Russian scientists indicates that the prevailing climate may have calmed the usually turbulent Bering Sea during that period, she added.

"This new environmental evidence indicates that the Northwest Pacific was becoming warmer and drier at that time. That may have allowed the Aleuts to take those first long, dangerous sea voyages," she said.

The team will return to the Aleutians in late May to further investigate evidence uncovered during the past three years that may help science to better undertand how and when the most remote and isolated areas of North America were colonized.

"West and her team have uncovered many 'firsts' that will become vital pieces in the history and pre-history of the western Aleutian Islands," said Fae Korsmo, who oversees Arctic social science research in NSF's Office of Polar Programs.

The team was the first to identify a bone from a Stellar's sea cow, a large walrus-like animal, ever be found in the Aleutians east of the Commander Islands, adjacent to the Russian coast. The presence of the bone on Buldir Island may indicate that the animals lived in the Aleutians as well as the Commanders, and that humans moving westward from Alaska may have exterminated them from the eastern islands.

Buldir also is the site of the only whalebone house ever scientifically excavated in the Aleutians. Christine LeFevre, a team member with French Museum of Natural History, made the find while excavating a pit near the beach. Because of the position of the bones, "we could tell immediately that this wasn't a whale that had stranded on the beach and died there," West said. "In one side of the house, someone had excavated a pit and lined it with the shoulder-blades of sea lions and they had placed a whale skull nose-down in the pit."

The whalebone house dates from the 15th century and it is almost certain that the island was occupied much earlier than that, though evidence of that occupation has yet to be found. But West noted that Buldir is difficult to land on even today and that perhaps Aleuts temporarily by-passed it and then returned later.

West also has obtained permission from the Aleut Corporation to remove bones that may be the remains of ancient Aleuts from a cave on Attu island. If the remains prove to be the bones of Aleuts, DNA sampling will allow for comparison with contemporary Aleuts and perhaps shed light on changes in nutrition and health as well as additional clues to the puzzle of migration patterns.

The team also will take a first look this field season at what it believes are the first petroglyphs -- or stone carvings -- discovered in the Aleutians. Debra Corbett, an archeologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and a member of the NSF-funded team, said the carvings, which were found on automobile-sized rocks on a beach on Agattu Island, are the first evidence of such artwork on the Aleutian chain. Although some evidence of cave painting has been documented in the Aleutians, she said, "petroglyphs are pretty rare generally in Alaska, and there have never been any reported in the Aleutians. It's a major puzzle."

Inca Girl Slept Through Human Sacrifice
By Jason Webb April 29, 1999 c. Reuters

SALTA, Argentina - The 500-year-old girl's face looks tranquil. They got her drunk on beer and she was numb from the altitude and the freezing snow before she was wrapped in blankets and brightly colored cloth and buried alive.

The little Inca girl's face is the most perfectly preserved of its age ever found. She, another girl and a boy were mummified naturally by the extreme cold and the lack of oxygen 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) up on the summit of the Llullaillaco volcano in the northwestern Argentine Andes.

Modern CAT scans show their organs are still intact. There appears to be frozen blood in their veins and the remains of their last meals are still in their bowels.

The girl, whose face can be seen poking through her dusty rags, was about 14. Her cheeks are swollen but she looks like one of the dark-skinned children who play in the streets of the provincial capital Salta today under the shadows of the arid mountains worshiped by their ancestors.

"The children offered to the gods were messengers from humanity to the divine world," said Juan Schobinger, an expert in the Inca civilization and high mountain archeology from Argentina's National University of Cuyo.

"Adults were not sacrificed because they did not perhaps have that special force which children have."

The Inca empire was the largest of the American civilizations destroyed by the Spanish conquistadors. In only 90 years it had spread as far north as Quito in modern Ecuador and south to central Chile by the time Francisco Pizarro took the Emperor Atahualpa hostage, released him in exchange for a room full of gold and then had him garroted anyway in 1533.

Ancient Children Lie On Mountains

The mummified remains of sacrificed children have lain on mountaintops in Peru and elsewhere in the Andes for half a millennium. They were buried with small quantities of food, beer and narcotic coca leaves to chew on their journey to meet the gods and were accompanied by male and female figurines of gold and seashells and tiny statues of llamas.

The Incas' theocratic state held annual festivals where children were offered to the gods to ensure the functioning of the sun and bountiful crops. Children were also brought in from the far-flung provinces to take part in ceremonies and be returned to mountains near their homes to be sacrificed.

Schobinger believes the young victims were sometimes selected and prepared years in advance. Near the icy summit of the tallest mountain in the Americas, Aconcagua on the border of Argentina and central Chile, he found the mummified body of a 7-year-old boy who had been fed nothing but corn for the last two years of his life -- possibly as a ritual preparation.

"Maize had its set of symbols. This is all impregnated with symbolism, which we do not fully understand," Schobinger said.

The crown of the boy's skull is as bare as an eggshell and a crack caused by the heavy blow that killed him exposes his shrunken brain. But he still has a face, contorted in what looks like fear, and his adult teeth were just coming through.

To be sacrificed was a great honor for the Incas. Their ceremonies were humane in comparison with the bloody rites of the Aztecs in Mexico, who shocked even the cutthroat Spaniards by mass sacrifices of war prisoners.

Honored Parents Sacrificed Their Young

An early Spanish chronicler copied an oral history of a famous sacrifice made by the chief of a Peruvian valley who offered his own daughter to the emperor, known as the Inca. The girl was renamed Tantacagua, or yellow corn, by the emperor.

"It is told that they carried out a ceremony, dressed her in the finest robes, prepared a special funeral chamber and buried her alive. From that moment the place was venerated as a 'huaca,' a sacred place inhabited by someone who had not died but continued to live in the other world," Schobinger said.

Archeologists believe victims were led to the place of sacrifice in a procession lasting days, climbing up rugged mountains and stopping at bare stone shelters. A scientist who went on the expedition up Llullaillaco -- one of the world's tallest volcanoes -- almost died from a pulmonary edema caused by the altitude, but the Incas had no such equipment and carried heavy loads, sometimes including stones.

The victims were probably offered to the sun god, who was associated with the emperor himself. But the mountains were also venerated as gods, known as apus in the Quechua language spread by the Incas and still spoken throughout the Andes.

One of the girls found on Llullaillaco had her skull deformed by tight binding from birth so that it took the shape of a conical mountain. Other deformed skulls have been found bound into the form of mountains with multiple peaks, which were considered the breasts of female mountain gods.

Lust For Gold Still Endangers Incas

The same lust for gold that led the Spaniards to conquer the Incas still endangers their holy places. Treasure hunters brave snow and altitude to ransack Inca sites, often using explosives to break through the frozen soil in search of gold and statuettes to be sold to rich collectors.

Archeologists climbing the Quehuar volcano found a mummy frozen in a block of ice. Without the equipment to get it out, they decided to retrieve it on a later expedition. But treasure hunters had wrecked the site by the time they returned.

They found one of the mummy's ears encrusted in an old Inca wall by the force of the dynamite, Maria Constanza Ceruti, a member of the Llullaillaco team, said.

The dark-skinned Andean peoples often suffer discrimination in predominantly European Argentina. But their old beliefs still survive in the remote mountain villages of northern Argentina, mixed with fervent Catholicism.

Country people still climb high to leave offerings of food and grain at the Inca sites to appease the apus. One old Salta man swore that human sacrifice goes on quietly today as well. Local sugar plantation bosses kill and eat one of their workers every year to ensure a sweet crop, he said.

"It's because they sign pacts with the devil," he told Reuters as pitch-black night closed in on the road to Chile, which winds through empty mountains.

Smithsonian Returning Ishi Remains
.c The Associated Press By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID 5/7/99

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The remains of the man thought to be the last Yahi Indian will make a final journey home.

The brain of an American Indian called Ishi will be turned over to the Redding Rancheria and Pit River Tribe in California after more than 80 years as part of the Smithsonian Institution's anthropological collection.

California Indians have been seeking return of the brain for months, after learning its whereabouts.

"The Smithsonian Institution recognizes that all California Native Americans feel a powerful connection with Ishi and a responsibility to see his remains are united and given a proper burial,'' Robert W. Fri, director of the National Museum of Natural History, said in a statement.

After his death in 1916, probably from tuberculosis, Ishi's brain was sent to the Smithsonian.

The rest of his remains were cremated, the ashes placed in a simple black jar in Olivet Memorial Park in Colma, Calif. Chiseled into the container's surface are the words "Ishi. The Last Yahi Indian. 1916.''

"He may be the last Yahi, but he was related closely to the Yanas. It was the Yanas that became part of the Redding group,'' Fri explained in an interview.

"Once we established that there were some close relatives it was pretty straightforward'' to decide where to return the brain, he said.

Fri said the brain will be returned at a time and place to be decided by the Indians.

"They haven't decided what they want us to do,'' Fri said. "These are decisions that they will take very seriously. This is not something they will make a snap decision about.''

The museum has repatriated more than 4,000 of its collection of 18,000 remains of American Indians since 1984.

In 1911, Ishi was found near starvation at Oroville, in Butte County, Calif. He drew the attention of University of California anthropologists and settled into a job doing light work at the school.

He became a kind of living exhibit, making spears, bows and arrows as fascinated visitors watched.

The middle-aged Ishi never told his name. Anthropologists came up with Ishi, which means "man'' in a local Indian dialect.

Despite Ishi's expressed horror of the concept of autopsies -- he thought the body should be burned immediately to free its soul -- his body was autopsied and the brain removed.

The whereabouts of Ishi's brain was a mystery for years until an investigation discovered it had been sent to Washington. That report in February launched the recovery effort that ended Friday with the decision to return the brain to California.

Yana People To Receive Ishi's Brain
May 10, 1999

THIS PAST WEEK, the Smithsonian Institution announced that Ishi is coming home to Northern California. Ishi's brain will be returned to his closest living relatives, the Yana people of the Redding Rancheria and Pit River Tribe. The Yana will then determine how to proceed with a proper burial. This will conclude a process of repatriation that has been guided by the Smithsonian's legal obligation and moral commitment to return Ishi's remains to his descendants.

When the Smithsonian was first contacted three months ago about Ishi, we knew of no living members of his tribe. In fact, although he has been described as ``the last Yahi,'' Ishi always identified himself as a Yahi-Yana Indian. During the Smithsonian's consultations with Native American groups in Northern California, the Redding Rancheria and Pit River tribe came forward and asked us to repatriate Ishi's remains to the Yana.

In returning Ishi's remains to the Yana, the Smithsonian has followed both the letter and the spirit of the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989. This law, together with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990, reflects the moral principle that American Indians and Native Alaskans have a right to determine the destiny of their ancestral remains, sacred objects, funerary offerings and cultural patrimonial objects conserved in museums throughout the United States. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has adhered to this principle in returning more than 4,000 human remains and nearly 1,000 cultural objects, and we continue to follow it as we repatriate other Native American remains and objects still found in the museum's collections.

Returning native remains to Indian hands does not absolve non-natives of responsibility for having taken them. But the process of repatriation worked for Ishi. And the Smithsonian is committed to seeing that it continues to work.

Archaeologist hopes artifacts will reveal what may be first Americans
© 1999 Nando Media & © 1999 Associated Press May 10, 1999

COLUMBIA, S.C. - More than 12,000 years ago, a group of early Americans on a bluff above the Savannah River chipped stone into tools. Last year, University of South Carolina archaeology professor Albert C. Goodyear led a team that discovered the fruits of that work.

Goodyear's findings stirred national interest and echoed findings in South America, Virginia and Pennsylvania that raised fundamental questions about where the first Americans came from.

Goodyear tried to use radio carbon methods to date last year's findings, but the tests weren't conclusive. This year, Goodyear will go back to the site and try to use other methods to figure out the age of an early spear head, blade fragments and a flake tool that was probably used for wood or bone carving.

"The little tiny blades look very much like you see in Siberia," Goodyear said.

Goodyear found the artifacts more than a yard below material left by the Clovis culture. The Clovis culture is believed to have come to North America about 12,000 years ago. The mammoth hunting culture gets it name from a New Mexico site where spear points were found.

The little blades raise big questions that Goodyear wants to begin to answer. Populations could have migrated one or two times and come from Europe as well as Siberia. "All of the sudden the ball game is wide open for human history in the Western hemisphere," Goodyear said.

LARGEST REPATRIATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Pueblo of Jemez to Rebury the Remains of Over 2000 Native American Ancestors At Pecos, New Mexico 5/17/99

During the weekend of May 22, 1999 the skeletal remains of over 2000 Native American ancestors will be brought home to Pecos, New Mexico for a private reburial near their original grave sites in what has been judged the largest repatriation in American History.

This sensitive and historically significant event is the result of eight years of negotiations between Tribal Leaders of the Pueblo of Jemez and the Robert S. Peabody Museum at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University, the Maxwell Museum at the University of New Mexico, the Museum of New Mexico, and the National Park Service. Numerous other Tribal groups have been involved in these negotiations and will attend the private funeral along with representatives from the museums and various Federal agencies. The actual location of the grave site is still being withheld by the Pueblo of Jemez.

The vast majority of these human remains were excavated between 1915 and 1929 by an archaeologist named Alfred V. Kidder whom removed them from the numerous ruins of Pecos Pueblo, an important archaeological site located in North Central New Mexico that is ancestral to the People of the Pueblo of Jemez. The bodies were then taken back to Massachusetts where the actual bones were given to "Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University" located in Cambridge. The artifacts which had been found with the bodies were retained by the "Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Phillips Academy" (Andover, Mass.) which sponsored Kidder's excavations. Since that time, the vast majority of these bodies and their associated artifacts have been kept at these two academic institutions. In the years following, a few other archaeologists also performed excavations at Pecos, most of which were conducted in and near the Spanish Church that still stands at "Pecos National Historical Park." From these excavations, additional human bodies were removed from their original graves and placed in museums located in New Mexico. A few were kept by the National Park Service. With the exception of a few from the Church cemetery that have been determined to be of European descent, all of the Native American ancestors are now being returned back home to Pecos for reburial by the Traditional Leaders of the Pueblo of Jemez.

According to the Pueblo of Jemez, "this repatriation has been a success because all of the parties involved have treated one another with respect, have strived to prevent politics from entering into the consultation process, and at all times, have listened to one another and have maintained honest and open lines of communication. In essence, it proves that government-to-government relationships can be a reality as long as all parties work with, rather than against, one another. "Tribal Archaeologist William J. Whatley went on to add that "This repatriation demonstrates that NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) can in fact be a strong and effective law if respect, commitment and equal consideration are inherent components of the consultation process."

"By concluding this repatriation, we seek the restoration of the spiritual harmony and peace that the ancestors have been deprived of," said Raymond Gachupin, Governor of the Pueblo of Jemez. "We seek the reestablishment of the respect that all human beings deserve, and most of all, we seek confirmation of the concept that all men are created equal."

Pueblo of Jemez Office of the Governor

America's Founding Fathers May Have Siberian Roots
by Elizabeth Culotta c. Science 17 May 1999

Columbus, Ohio--After crossing the Bering Strait to Alaska, the first Americans traveled as far as Tierra del Fuego--but where did their journey begin? Two independent presentations at a meeting of the American Association for Physical Anthropology, held here from 26 April to 1 May, suggest that the founding fathers--if not the founding mothers--of Native Americans may have come from the Lake Baikal region in Southern Siberia.

 A team led by geneticist Mike Hammer of the University of Arizona, Tucson, tracked the homeland of early Native Americans by sampling the Y chromosome--found only in males--from 2198 men from 60 populations worldwide. Earlier work had noted that many Native Americans have one particular set of mutations that sets them apart, called a haplotype. Hammer found this major haplotype in half of all Native Americans, but his large sample yielded five additional New World haplotypes. To trace them back to their source, Hammer sampled more than 1000 men from across Asia and found that all six New World haplotypes are now concentrated in two centers, northwestern and northeastern Siberia. But the indigenous peoples living there now are thought to have migrated from around Lake Baikal.  Those findings fit with independent data presented by molecular anthropologist Theodore Schurr of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio. In a sample of more than 300 ethnic Siberians and 280 Native Americans, he and his colleagues saw two primary ancestral Native American patrilineages. One of them turns up commonly in peoples west of Baikal, like one of Hammer's haplotypes. Schurr also sees a sublineage that apparently arose further east in Asia, perhaps near the Amur River. A complicating factor is that studies of mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through the mother and so reveals women's movements, hint at other Asian source areas, including one in Mongolia. But for males, another intriguing clue points to the Lake Baikal region. Archaeologists have previously noted a potential source culture there, dated 25,000 to 20,000 years ago: the Mal'ta, a mammoth-hunting people known for blade and biface tools that researchers have speculated might be the precursors of the Clovis points early Americans made 12,000 years ago. Archaeologist Ted Goebel of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says the new data will spur researchers to focus even more intently on the Baikal region. Says Goebel: "For sure the answers, yea or nay, lie somewhere up there on the mammoth steppe."

Indians Walk 80 Miles for Bones
.c The Associated Press 5/20/99

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- As a truck loaded with the bones of their ancestors made its way from Massachusetts to New Mexico, more than 200 Pueblo Indians were walking on an 80-mile pilgrimage to be there when it arrives.

The Indians were using the route their ancestors took 160 years ago, when disease and warfare decimated Pecos Pueblo. Most of the survivors moved to Jemez Pueblo, now a small community of scattered adobe houses about 50 miles north of Albuquerque.

To unify the tribe and reconnect with their culture, a large group of people >from Jemez Pueblo left on foot Wednesday. They headed through the high red rock area of northern New Mexico through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains toward Pecos National Historic Park, about 15 miles east of Santa Fe.

There, on Saturday, they will meet a truck that is bringing home the bones of 1,912 people excavated between 1915 and 1929 in New Mexico's upper Pecos Valley by archaeologist Alfred Kidder. The pueblo plans a burial ceremony at the monument.

Harvard University handed over the remains Tuesday in the largest and perhaps most scientifically significant transfer under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires the return of Indian artifacts.

The bones, plus objects to be returned next week from Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., represent the foundation of scientific knowledge about early cultures of the American Southwest, said James Bradley, director of the Peabody Andover museum.

Jemez Pueblo Gov. Raymond Gachupin said the walk to the Pecos monument was a way for the entire community to get involved.

"I think it's mostly to pay tribute to our ancestors to give us an idea of the pain and tribulations that they went through,'' he said. ``For them, it was a matter of survival. For us, it is a matter of respect.''

Walkers on Wednesday, the first day, included the young and old. Some wore traditional attire of a cotton dress, sash belt and moccasins, while others were in sweats and running shoes.

According to the Jemez creation story, Father Sun warned that if the people neglected or forgot the traditional ways, he would take their lands for someone else. Today, the culture remains strong: Children in the 3,200-member tribe learn their traditional language, Towa, before English.

"Other pueblos are losing their language,'' tribal official Cruz Toya said. "The reason we are here is to show the people, our ancestors, we care. By doing this we also teach the kids our language and culture. Hopefully, they will carry this on and tell their kids the history we made.''

Remains of Pueblo Ancestors Reburied
.c The Associated Press By SUSAN MONTOYA 5/22/99

PECOS, N.M. (AP) -- Wind whistled through trees and clouds darkened the sky as a closing prayer celebrated the reburial of nearly 2,000 skeletal remains of Jemez Pueblo Indian ancestors on today.

The remains, which were excavated from Pecos Pueblo between 1915 and 1929 by archaeologist Alfred V. Kidder, were returned last week from Harvard University.

"I believe that this was the right and dignified thing to do,'' said Jemez Gov. Raymond Gachupin at the weathered adobe ruins in Pecos Pueblo, which was home to the tribe's ancestors and is now part of the Pecos National Historical Park.

About 1,000 Jemez Pueblo Indians -- clad in moccasins, ceremonial dresses and traditional ribbon shirts -- paid their last respects at the ceremony in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, 25 miles southeast of Santa Fe.

The ancestors have been "freed to roam the mountains, hills and valleys of their birthplace,'' Gachupin said during the prayer ceremony.

The remains of other tribes across the country will also eventually be returned to their homelands under the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The return of the Pecos remains and funerary items, which represent a wealth of scientific knowledge of the American Southwest, is the largest and perhaps most significant transfer under the act.

A century before Kidder's digging, Pecos Pueblo was a thriving trading center of plains Indians, other towns and Spanish settlers.

The Indians of Pecos eventually abandoned the town in 1838 after it was devastated by war and disease. The Pecos people made a 100-mile journey westward to what is now Jemez Pueblo.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Jemez Indians retraced their ancestors' footsteps, to meet a tractor-trailer rig bearing the remains.

Their journey ended Saturday with the unloading of more than 130 crates. The remains were ceremonially reburied in a 600-foot long plot amid juniper and pinon trees.

"This is a lovely place to return home,'' said Barbara Isaac, director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard. "This is the end of many journeys and it is also the beginning of many more journeys.''

Miami Circle given priority for state purchase
By TYLER BRIDGES c. Miami Herald May 26, 1999

The preservation of the Miami Circle, the enigmatic stone formation that harkens back to the Tequesta Indians, got a major boost Tuesday when Gov. Jeb Bush and the Florida Cabinet made the artifact the top priority under a state land purchasing program.

By adding the 38-foot-diameter circle to the state's Conservation and Recreational Lands program, Bush and the six-member Cabinet voted to purchase the site at its appraised value or at 50 percent of the developer's selling price, whichever option is cheaper.

The county still must come up with millions of dollars from private sources to preserve what county archaeologist Bob Carr says is a historically significant site that could be 2000 years old.

Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas said Tuesday's vote will make it easier for the county to get the private funding.

"It also shows that the Miami Circle is not just an archaeological find of local significance but is of state significance,'' he said.

The circle, located on the south bank of the Miami River, is currently in limbo. The county has sued the developer and the city to buy the land and preserve the Circle on site.

Developer Michael Baumann and Miami Mayor Joe Carollo want to move the formation, at Baumann's expense, to make way for a huge development project. Carollo argues that his cash-poor city cannot afford to give up the $1.1 million a year in taxes that Baumann's development is projected to generate.

Carollo said Bush and the Cabinet have yet to address any revenue shortfall for the city if the circle is preserved at its current site.

Penelas and the county commission have argued that the archaeological find is too significant to move.

Carollo argues the significance of the Circle may be exaggerated. He noted that Jerald Milanich, curator of archaeology and chairman of the anthropology department of the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida, recently suggested the circle may be only 100 years old.

Carollo said Tuesday that the state should ask Milanich to conduct an in-depth survey of the site before going any further.

Besides the political debate, the controversy is playing out in court. The next hearing is scheduled for June 14, when Baumann will contest the county's efforts to take over the circle, said Thomas Tew, Miami's outside attorney. But Tew said the county, the city and Baumann might be in court as late as October fighting over the circle's dollar value.

In the meantime, Penelas is trying to raise the money needed to buy the circle. It will cost at least $8 million, the amount Baumann said he has spent buying the property and undertaking initial development work. To make money on the deal, he is seeking millions more.

The county doesn't readily have the necessary cash. Penelas is seeking $8 million to $13 million from private sources. To that end, the county has written hundreds of corporations and foundations nationwide seeking contributions.

Ruins Under Wal-Mart Site: Development on Hold After Discovery
By Guy Webster c. The Christian Science Monitor 6/8/99

C O O L I D G E, Ariz., - The dusty parcel of land sits across from an ancient Indian ruin, on a former cotton field. To Wal-Mart executives, it represents a prime site for a new retail store in their inexorable march across the United States. To archaeologists, it contains ruins that will help unlock mysteries behind one of the great prehistoric cultures of North America. The fate of the 35-acre parcel in this Arizona town points up a growing national dispute over treatment of prehistoric sites on private land. Certain archaeological sites - those that come under federal purview - are protected. But private projects on private land are far less regulated. "Archaeological sites are being destroyed every day," says Rob Criswell of the Archaeological Conservancy. Underground Mystery In Coolidge, Wal-Mart put its planned store on hold last month after the neighboring Gila River Indian Community and the Society of American Archaeology raised concerns about what's under the site. They've identified 900-year-old ruins and likely burials beneath a zone churned by decades of farming. "We know for a fact there are houses there," says Keith Kintigh, an archaeologist at Arizona State University in Tempe. Wal-Mart public affairs director Cynthia Lin says the Arkansas-based company was unaware of the concerns until recently. The grandest remains of the prehistoric Hohokam culture stand across the road, at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.

The Space Between Settlements The Wal-Mart land sits between the Casa Grande ruins and an earlier Hohokam settlement, the Grewe site, a half mile east. Archaeologists now interpret the combination as a continuous population center lasting nearly 1,000 years. But sometime in the 11th century, the Grewe moved. Why the village moved and why it rose to such greatness are still unexplained puzzles, " says Tucson archaeologist David Abbott. The Wal-Mart land might provide answers. Dalton Cole, the farmer who sold the parcel for the Wal-Mart store, sold an adjacent 30 acres to the Archaeological Conservancy. As part of the deal, the conservancy promised not to oppose the store construction, says Mr. Cole. Now, however, Mr. Kintigh's group is asking Wal-Mart to choose another location or provide special testing and excavation. The company is weighing its options.

'Noah's Ark' Cache of Bones Offers Rare Peek Into Prehistory
By SCOTT SONNER June 6, 1999 Copyright Los Angeles Times

Nevada -- Cheetah, camel and llama bones sealed in the deep freeze of a Nevada cave for tens of thousands of years are giving scientists a rare glimpse at the Africa-like grassland that covered much of the West before the last Ice Age. The unusually well-preserved cache from about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago includes bones from a wide variety of creatures now extinct--from the giant short-faced bear to huge deer and bison species. "This cave is kind of a Noah's Ark collection of species," said Tom Stafford, a Boulder, Colo.-based specialist who has been conducting the radiocarbon-dating tests on the bones. "I can't wait to get there," he said. "I'm drooling." At 40 degrees, high humidity and 7,000-feet altitude, the conditions at the back of the dark cave are identical to those of a modern refrigerator.

An Ecosystem of Unmatched Diversity Perhaps most intriguing to the scientists are the intact twigs, leaves, seeds and animal hair from which they believe they will be able to extract DNA to compare the genetic makeup of past and present species. "We could see how much evolution there has been," said Bryan Hockett, the Bureau of Land Management archeologist who discovered the find nearly three years ago and is leading the excavation. "I kept saying to myself, 'I can't believe we are finding this,' " Hockett recalled. "It was just 'Eureka!' in terms of the scientific information." Hockett, 37, and fellow BLM archeologist Eric Dillingham, 37, have been dragging bones out of the cave for the last two summers and this month plan the largest expedition yet into the cavern. They only realized recently how significant the bones were. In January, they spent days comparing dozens of bones to their counterparts at the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. They matched the cheetah bone to an African cheetah skeleton at the Los Angeles County Museum. "There was no fanfare, no bells or whistles," Hockett said. "I was just sitting in the mammal section with nobody around looking at the skeleton of a cheetah--just you and the bone." The bones are in the back of a 700-foot-deep cave where miners left their mark in the 1860s. Hockett suspects that the cave, in the Sulphur Spring Range about 300 miles east of Reno, was a den for cheetahs or other large carnivores that dragged back prey to feed their young. The find is evidence of the wildly diverse ecosystem in the Western United States before the last big Ice Age 18,000 years ago. It was a vast grassland where large predators stalked grazing animals well before man is believed to have arrived on the scene 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. "Some say maybe it would be like the savannas of Africa, equatorial Africa," Hockett said. "That's one place where you've had a lot of big grazers and carnivores. But it would have had to have been a lot cooler and wetter. A lot of different trees," like pine and spruce, he said. "The real answer is, there is nothing left quite like this. There is nothing that is as diverse as this. It is unmatched in the world today." Some of the bones are from animals with unusual names, such as the "bigheaded llama" and "yesterday's camel." They come from the end of the Pleistocene Age. There are horses, mountain sheep, pronghorn antelope, wolves, weasels, badgers, coyotes, lizards, bats and birds. The giant short-faced bear--among the rarer bones--had a short snout and longer legs than a typical bear. It was much larger than bears today and a fast runner. The cheetah remains are only the second discovered in Nevada. Fewer than 10 have been recorded in North America.

Explaining the Pronghorn's Speed The cheetah remains may shed light on a question that has bothered scientists for decades: Why are pronghorn antelope so fast? "There was always speculation that there must have been a faster-running predator during the Pleistocene than we know of today because the American pronghorn can run so much faster than anything living here now that might have been a predator," said Robert J. Emry, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History in Washington. "With the cheetah, some say it might explain the pronghorn's adaptation for swiftness--what it was it adapted to escape from," he said. Part of the cave had been surveyed by a team of archeologists from UC Davis in 1975. Researcher Kelly McGuire recorded the findings--including horse and bigheaded llama--in an article published in 1980. But they didn't radiocarbon-date the remains and apparently were unaware of four other sections of the cave, including the back section with the oldest bones. "There are a lot of tight places where you have to crawl through on your stomach," Dillingham said. Hockett, who grew up watching National Geographic specials on television, read McGuire's work in college and remembered it when he started working for the BLM in Elko in 1991. "It just stuck in the back of my head. Llamas are pretty rare in Nevada. When I started working at the BLM, I heard a rumor it might be on BLM lands," he said. Hockett used a global positioning satellite unit to locate the cave. He found McGuire's original test excavation site in the front of the cave as well as a more recently dug hole that "looked like a looter's pit." He granted an interview on the condition that the exact location of the cave be kept secret to protect it against further damage. But he doubts anyone could find the bones even if they got inside. "The cave is so dark, even with your lighting, that almost anytime I go in there I lose something," Hockett said. The unique combination of creatures may be surpassed only by the unique way in which the bones have been preserved. "It is incredibly rare," said Stafford, who runs Stafford Research Laboratories, one of the nation's preeminent carbon-dating labs. "It is just incredibly well preserved both physically and chemically. It's really bound to have DNA," he said. Stafford is among those headed into the cave this month for a major study of the contents along with experts from the University of Nevada's Desert Research Institute and the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona. Hockett said he doesn't know what to expect. "We know quite a bit about the critters from 18,000 to 10,000 years ago because the last glacial surge was 18,000 years ago," he said. "We know a lot less about 20,000 to 40,000 or 50,000 years ago. "At most cave sites, at bedrock you are at 10,000 to 20,000 years ago and that's it. These bones date to 40,000 to 50,000 years, and those bones are sitting on the surface. "We've only made a pinprick."

Archaeologists Fight Developers
By Isaac A. Levi c. Associated Press June 8, 1999

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP) -- With a real estate development in the works, archaeologists are fighting for a chance to study a site they say could provide clues to the fate of a famed ancient culture along the Gulf of Mexico.

The site -- now just a cluster of dirt-covered mounds called El Dorado -- is in the 200-acre Mandinga mangrove swamp along the Jamapa River, just 13 miles south of the port of Veracruz.

The Mandinga Swamp Promotion and Construction company had started draining the swamp and parceling it to create a luxury housing project with a marina when the government's National Anthropology and History Institute discovered the plan in November.

The institute got injunctions to stop construction and has been negotiating with the developer over ways to save the site.

A few months before the work started, Annick Daneels, a Belgian archaeologist at Mexico City's National Autonomous University, had completed a study indicating the five-acre El Dorado site was important.

Archaeologists say it could hold clues to the fate of the Olmecs, best known for the colossal, mysterious stone heads they carved. They flourished from 1200 BC to 400 BC, then their culture disappeared.

Daneels, who has been working in Mexico for 17 years, estimates El Dorado was inhabited from around 800 BC to AD 1200, and appears to be the only site in the area with such a prolonged period of habitation.

"There is a small ceremonial site there, and from what I have been able to determine from superficial evidence, it had a long period of occupation. That alone makes it more than quite important,'' she said.

Daneels and Fernando Winfield Capitaine, former director of the Jalapa Museum of Anthropology, said El Dorado could have been peopled by Zoques, a people suspected of being direct descendants of the Olmecs.

Winfield, an anthropologist, believes the Zoques lived in "chieftainships,'' communities much like the city-states of medieval Europe.

Among them was La Mojarra, another swamp "chieftainship'' 20 miles south of the port of Alvarado where archaeologists found a huge stone pillar a decade ago with one of the continent's most important hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Winfield said the Zoques lived in relative harmony with the Totonacas to the north and traded salt for other goods with the Tlaxcalas, enemies of the Aztecs in the highlands of central Mexico.

Real estate agents in Veracruz state estimate the Mandinga Swamp real estate project, divided in 2,700-square-foot plots, is worth $1 million and will eventually -- if successful -- be worth at least $10 million.

Mandinga Swamp Promotion says it was not aware the area included an archaeological site. It has not yet accepted the institute's proposal that it help finance a study of the area.

Luis Alberto Lopez Wario, director of the institute's archaeological safeguards department, said the institute has proposed a five-month study of El Dorado by six noted archaeologists so the agency can determine which areas can be developed and which should be protected as archaeological sites.

Discovery may reveal ancient secrets
c. Calgary Herald News 6 June 1999 by Carmen Kinniburgh

Calgary archeologists have discovered a stone spear head on the sandy shore of Lake Minnewanka near Banff that they believe is 11,000 years old.

Called a Plain View point, the hunting tool is the first of its kind found undisturbed in the soil in Alberta, and it may also prove to be the oldest, said University of Calgary archeologist Alison Landals, who's leading the excavation.

The earliest people to arrive in Alberta may have left the ancient spear point behind 5,000 years before the pyramids in Egypt were built.

"This site is important to all of North America," Landals said. "It's enriching to the average person to know what people did here . . . when the first people came" to the continent.

The spear point was found buried beside a prehistoric campfire. Ashes from the fire will be radiocarbon-dated, to confirm the tool's age and significance, Landals said.

Students Matt Moors and Jill Milner -- from a U of C archeology field school -- found the narrow, palm-sized point in a layer of sandy soil more than one metre deep.

Landals suspects the treasure was dropped by a small family group, camped around a fire during an overnight stay near the deep mountain lake.

But if more hearths and spear points emerge, it's possible the lakeshore may have been a regularly used camping site. The dig has also yielded other stone tools and a partial skull from an extinct species of bison.

The site is an estimated 700 metres long; the team is excavating within a 200-metre by 100-metre area.

But grit from a Sahara Desert-like wind and spring runoff from the Rocky Mountains are eroding the site, threatening to obliterate important clues to Alberta's prehistoric past.

Within a couple of weeks, the dig is expected to be under water as runoff fills the Lake Minnewanka reservoir.

"There's a lot more information to be gained from this site," said Dale Walde, U of C archeology professor who's teaching the field school.

"It's rather a race against time, hoping that the reservoir erosion doesn't take away the information before we can get at it."

Also unearthed was another spear head, the style of which is known as an Agate Basin.

It was discovered along with parts of a skull from an extinct species of bison, allowing scientists to precisely date the point to about 10,000 years old.

Researchers have determined that some of the stones used to make the tools originated in southeast British Columbia. So the tools' owners may have travelled to other areas or traded with groups living elsewhere.

"We're not just looking for the oldest things, we're looking at how people lived through time and how they adapted themselves to changing conditions," Walde said.

The Bow Valley in Banff National Park is an internationally renowned archeological area. Three of Alberta's oldest stone tool discoveries -- including this most recent find -- have been located within a few kilometres of each other.

Landals said a U of C colleague first noticed the artifact-rich Lake Minnewanka shore in the early 1960s.

But the beach is highly sensitive to wind and wave erosion that churns the layers of sand.

Tools ranging from prehistoric to fur-trading times have been found side by side in the sediment -- making their exact ages suspect.

Landals first investigated the site while working as an environmental consultant in 1993.

She noticed smears of red soil in the sand -- an archeological marker of prehistoric sediment formations older than 9,000 years.

"When I saw that soil I thought, 'Wow, there's a chance for older stuff to be preserved beneath it.' "

Landals returned to the beach in 1997 to complete a technical report for her doctorate degree. But she became so fascinated, her excavations continued two more years.

Thanks to her perseverance, this is the first time in Alberta that ancient human tools have been found undisturbed, within the same layer of soil in which they were dropped.

"There's lots of things you can figure out if you actually find it in the ground," Landals noted.

She and other archeologists can now begin to reconstruct what life was like in the area 11,000 years ago. Further examination may reveal traces of blood on the spear head, indicating which animals were hunted. And if fossilized pollen is found, it will reveal what plants grew there.

"It would have been a very different environment than it is today," Landals said.

With massive glaciers slowly retreating just a few kilometres up the Bow Valley, few trees and a frozen tundra landscape, the beach would barely be recognizable compared to today.

While spring runoff covers the site with water each year, this year's late melt in the mountains has allowed Landals to continue working.

She has the help of 18 field school students who have been at the site since May 13.

The team plans to continue working until Wednesday, then fill the excavation pits to protect them from erosion while the site is underwater over the summer and winter.

The dig is jointly funded by Banff National Park, the U of C, field school registration fees and private donors. The team is looking for additional funding to continue next summer.

Parks Canada will eventually take possession of the artifacts, with the more interesting pieces likely going on public display.

Tribe fights theft of artifacts
By AP Wire Service 6/14/99

Caddo objects sold on Web

BINGER (AP) -- Want a Creek pipe taken from Georgia soil? Or a Caddo loop pipe unearthed in Clark County, Ark.? How about a set of Caddo ear spools? All you need is access to auction houses on the Internet, where collectors, knowingly or unknowingly, partake in the trade of items considered sacred by tribal members.

"These are funerary objects taken from burial sites," said Stacey Halfmoon, historic preservation director of the Caddo Tribe. "Why would a Caddo pot be in such good shape if it wasn't taken from a grave? "It was obviously buried with someone."

Traditional Caddo beliefs require the dead to be buried with certain objects for their journey into the Spirit World. Without the sacred items, the souls of the dead will wander aimlessly.

"If people think long and hard about where these items come from, it's not too hard to figure out," Halfmoon said. "I have a hard time believing someone who has been collecting for a long time would be unaware of what's going on."

As the looting continues, so does the tribe's vigilance.

In October, the tribe hired former archaeologist Robert Cast to team with Halfmoon as its new historic preservation officer.

Cast tracks and monitors the unearthing of any Caddo burial sites from the tribe's traditional home range prior to its removal, covering southeast Oklahoma, northeast Texas, northwest Louisiana and southwest Arkansas.

Cast also looks for any illegal trafficking. He has found several catalogs that sell ancient Caddo objects such as hand-painted bowls and pots, stone tools and carved clay pipes.

He also has found Web site auction houses conducting the same business, he said.

Developers Unearth Ancient Town in Swamp Along Gulf of Mexico
History: Slated for a luxury housing project, land may hold important clues about ancient Olmec culture. Archeologists are fighting for a chance to study the site.
By ISAAC A. LEVI c. Associated Press June 13, 1999

VERACRUZ, Mexico--With a real estate development in the works, archeologists are fighting for a chance to study a site they say could provide clues to the fate of a famous ancient culture along the Gulf of Mexico.

The site--now just a cluster of dirt-covered mounds called El Dorado--is in the 200-acre Mandinga mangrove swamp along the Jamapa River, just 13 miles south of the port of Veracruz.

The Mandinga Swamp Promotion and Construction company had started draining the swamp and parceling it to create a luxury housing project with a marina when the government's National Anthropology and History Institute discovered the plan in November.

The institute got injunctions to stop construction and has been negotiating with the developer over ways to save the site.

A few months before the work started, Annick Daneels, a Belgian archeologist at Mexico City's National Autonomous University, had completed a study indicating that the five-acre El Dorado site was important.

Archeologists say it could hold clues to the fate of the Olmecs, best known for the colossal, mysterious stone heads they carved. They flourished from 1200 BC to 400 BC; then their culture disappeared.

Daneels, who has been working in Mexico for 17 years, estimates El Dorado was inhabited from around 800 BC to AD 1200, and appears to be the only site in the area with such a prolonged period of habitation. "There is a small ceremonial site there, and from what I have been able to determine from superficial evidence, it had a long period of occupation. That alone makes it more than quite important," she said.

Daneels and Fernando Winfield Capitaine, former director of the Jalapa Museum of Anthropology, said El Dorado could have been populated by Zoques, a people suspected of being direct descendants of the Olmecs.

Winfield, an anthropologist, believes the Zoques lived in "chieftainships," communities much like the city-states of medieval Europe.

Among them was La Mojarra, another swamp "chieftainship" 20 miles south of the port of Alvarado, where archeologists found a huge stone pillar a decade ago with one of the continent's most important hieroglyphic inscriptions.

Winfield said the Zoques lived in relative harmony with the Totonacas to the north and traded salt for other goods with the Tlaxcalas, enemies of the Aztecs in the highlands of central Mexico.

Real estate agents in Veracruz state estimate the Mandinga Swamp real estate project, divided in 2,700-square-foot plots, is worth $1 million and will eventually--if successful--be worth at least $10 million.

Mandinga Swamp Promotion says it was not aware the area included an archeological site. It has not yet accepted the institute's proposal that it help finance a study of the area.

Luis Alberto Lopez Wario, director of the institute's archeological safeguards department, said the institute has proposed a five-month study of El Dorado by six noted archeologists so the agency can determine which areas can be developed and which should be protected as archeological sites.

U.S. to Fight Smuggling of Nicaraguan Treasures
Reuters 16-JUN-99

MANAGUA, June 16 (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador Lino Gutierrez signed an agreement with Nicaragua on Wednesday to curb the smuggling of pre-Columbian artifacts in an effort to protect the Central American nation's archaeological heritage.

Under the agreement, pre-Hispanic archaeological goods imported to the United States from Nicaragua must have permits from the Nicaraguan government specifying their transport for purposes of scientific study or temporary exhibit in the United States.

The United States has similar agreements with El Salvador and Guatemala.

The U.S. government will issue a register of archaeological goods subject to protection in accordance with Nicaraguan law, to be distributed to customs agents and the public.

Both countries are signatories to a 1970 UNESCO convention for the prohibition of illegal import and export of cultural goods.

Vandals Hit Prehistoric Cavern Site
BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH c. THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE 6/16/99

Vandals broke through an iron gate and attempted to loot a cave on the edge of the Bonneville Salt Flats that likely contains evidence of the earliest human inhabitation of Utah, state officials discovered this week. A team of employees from the Utah Division of History and Utah Division of Parks and Recreation visited Juke Box Cave near Wendover on Tuesday to begin erecting signs explaining the archaeological significance of the cavern, part of Danger Cave State Park. Set aside decades ago for its prehistorical significance, the state park never has been developed, due to lack of funding. But state parks officials have steadily been trying to protect the area from looters. Tuesday, that effort suffered a setback when state employees found that someone had broken through a locked iron gate erected a year ago across the entrance of the cave. "Somebody just bashed a couple of bars out by apparently throwing big rocks down to break the welds," said state archaeologist Kevin Jones. "Once they got inside, they dug at least one new hole and expanded another earlier hole dug by looters, built a fire and rearranged some plastic flagging tape we had put around a sensitive section in April." The Tooele County Sheriff's Office was planning to open an investigation into the vandalism Wednesday, and state park law enforcement officials also were notified of the damage, which occurred sometime in the past month. Jones is trying to determine whether any artifacts were taken from Juke Box Cave, so named because a concrete floor was poured in the cavern during World War II and used as a makeshift dance hall by airmen stationed at the now-abandoned Army Air Base at Wendover. The damage to the gate protecting Juke Box Cave comes on the heels of vandalism earlier this year at Danger Cave, where the iron bars erected in 1997 as part of a $20,000 protection effort were pried apart. However, officials investigating that incident do not believe anyone gained illegal access to Danger Cave. Because of the concrete slab that covers much of its floor, Juke Box Cave had thwarted pothunters and possesses untouched stratigraphy (sedimentary layers) that give scientists a glimpse of climate and civilization dating back 13,000 years. Now, officials must try to repair the gate and figure out how to keep looters out. "We assumed that gate was sufficient but clearly it's not and you need some kind of monitoring out there," said David Madsen, an archaeologist with the Utah Geological Survey who has worked in Juke Box Cave. "That was a place that people used to party in and they may resent that it was taken away from them, plus putting up the gate may itself attract interest in what's in the cave."

Evidence suggests Central Americans bounced ahead in rubber production
by - Tina Hesman 06/21/99 c. AP

I'm rubber, you're glue. . . . That schoolyard jibe might have originated with the ancient Mesoamericans, who were processing rubber by 1600 B.C.

The Mesoamerican civilization, which dominated Central America before the Spanish invasion, got the jump on Charles Goodyear and rubber processing by about 3,500 years, say scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who authored a report in the June 18 issue of Science.

Museum artifacts show that the Mesoamericans formed rubber into tools, hollow human figurines and a large number of balls, some as large as beach balls and weighing up to 15 pounds.

Unprocessed latex from the Castilla elastica tree is too brittle to keep its shape when dried. So without rubber processing, ritualized ball games that were fundamental to religious and social life in Central America would have been impossible to play, the scientists say.

The MIT researchers consulted 16th-century Spanish texts, and modern-day huleros (rubber workers) from the Chiapas region of Mexico, to learn the ancient art of rubber-making.

The workers beat the juice from the vines of Ipomoea alba, a type of morning glory, and mix it with the natural latex to form a pliable white rubber. The researchers found that sulfur-containing compounds in the morning glory juice formed crosslinks between latex polymers, giving the rubber plenty of bounce and elasticity.

Really old money
by Alexandra Witze 06/21/99 c. AP

Ancient Peruvians had found their economic niches long before the rise of the Inca empire, new research suggests.

Some 80 miles south of Lima, archaeologists have uncovered fragments of an ancient kingdom, preserved in the ruins and trash piles of an early fishing village. The site, known as Cerro Azul, is so well-preserved as to shed new light on the economics of the region, scientists say.

Joyce Marcus, an archaeologist at the University of Michigan, and colleagues have been excavating Cerro Azul since 1982. There, they found a wide variety of fish and mammal bones, suggesting that the local residents had specialized in different kinds of commerce since before the Incan conquest of 1470.

From 1470 to 1530, the Incas set up a complex specialization system, in which villages along the coast would work only in fishing, while those in arable regions worked only in farming. But Cerro Azul was already set up like this, the scientists reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Eight to 12 elite families lived in Cerro Azul at the time; they got the best fish to eat, while the commoners dried and packaged sardines and anchovies for export. The people would trade the dried fish for other commodities, including live llamas and dried meat for food.

The Roots of Rubber's Reign -18th Century, or Ancient Mayan Times?
c. The Associated Press June 18, 1999

C A M B R I D G E, Mass.,

According to prevailing wisdom, the process for making rubber was invented in England in the mid-19th century. Now, a new report by some archeologists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that date may be off by as many as 3,800 years. The investigation that culminated in the new report, to be published today in the journal Science, began three years ago in an introductory archeology course. Michael Terkanian, a freshman from Brockton, was intrigued by the bouncy ball games played in Mayan cities in Central America when the Spanish explorers first encountered them in the 1500s.

The Ball's Beginnings

Terkanian's interest led to a three-year research project that looked into how the Mayans created the rubber balls, hundreds of years before the first rubber-making patent was issued in England in 1843. "Nobody thought about it," Terkanian's archeology professor Dorothy Hosler told The Boston Globe.

"It was just one of those obvious questions that nobody asked." The solid rubber balls intrigued the Spanish explorers, too - they brought a few samples back to show King Carlos V. At the time, the only balls known in Europe were made of leather and feathers, and didn't bounce very much.

Mayan Methodology

During their research, Terkanian and Hosler made three trips to Mayan archeological sites in Mexico. They found some Mayans in the area who still knew how to make rubber the ancient way. Rubber is made by collecting the sap, or latex, from the rubber tree and adding sulfur and heat. Terkanian and Hosler, with some help from MIT materials scientist Sandra Burkett, figured out that the ancient Mayans' recipe called for mixing the latex with juice from a morning glory vine, and then stirring the concoction for 15 minutes. The hot Mayan climate approximated the heat added to the modern rubber recipe, the researchers found. It's unclear exactly how the Mayans' ballgames were played or when they developed. Mayan society stretched from as early as 2000 B.C. to the 16th century A.D., but illustrations on pottery and reports from explorers gave some indications. In one game, a small ball was struck by a stick, the Globe reported. Another game used a larger ball that was thrown through an overhead hoop.

10,000 Mexican Artifacts Recovered
.c The Associated Press 6/29/99

PALENQUE, Mexico (AP) - More than 10,000 artifacts looted from archaeological sites around Mexico have been recovered by the government over the past year, an official said Tuesday.

The pieces were seized by the federal attorney general's office or turned over abroad to Mexican consulates and embassies, said Teresa Franco y Gonzalez, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.

"The fact that more than 10,000 objects from different cultures have been recovered says that there is a real pillage in various archaeological zones of the country,'' she said while attending a meeting on the Maya being held in this southern city, which is famous for its ruins.

She said nearly all the looting occurs in areas that are not set up for tourism.

Judge clears the way for county takeover of Miami Circle
c. AP 6/29/99

MIAMI (AP) - A circuit judge has ruled that Miami-Dade County can legally take control of property where a circular stone formation carved by Tequesta Indians was discovered. In her ruling Monday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Fredricka G. Smith said governments can take private property if it achieves a public purpose and fair compensation is paid to the owner.

"The Miami Circle has successfully leaped its first hurdle,'' Assistant County Attorney Thomas Goldstein said of ruling.

Now what needs to be resolved is how much the county will have to pay to compensate developer Michael Baumann for the land and if the county is willing to pay a high price for the property at the mouth of Miami River.

A jury trial, planned for October, will put a value on the 2.2-acre property. Estimates have ranged from $8 million to $50 million.

Baumann bought the land for $8 million. He holds a building permit for the property which increases the value of the land.

Baumann is asking to be reimbursed for lost profits from his real estate venture. He had planned to build a $126 million apartment complex with twin residential towers on the property.

He also wants to be reimbursed for the value of any prehistoric artifacts found on the site.

"We will contend that the artifacts are part of the valuation,'' said attorney Amy Brigham-Boulris said Monday.

The state has pledged to pay the property's appraised value or one-half of the county's acquisition price, whichever is less. The county has set up a trust fund to raise money for the acquisition.

However, fund-raising results have been meager. The acquisition fund has $4,012.55.

Mysterious delays plague Kennewick Man lawsuit
by Gina Binole c. Portland Business Journal June 28, 1999

On the second anniversary of what was supposed to be a speedy case, Kennewick Man's future remains about as murky as his past.

Kennewick Man was discovered by a couple of college students in 1996, who found him along a bank of the Columbia River in Washington. He's believed to have been a fisherman who died 9,300 years ago. A stone spearpoint stuck in his hip, and the repeated infections that likely came with it, could have been the cause. He stood about 5 feet 8 inches, tall for his time. He could've been anywhere between 40 and 55, an old guy back then.

His discovery has stirred religious tensions, racial unrest, political posturing and scientific curiosity. With that in mind, it should shock no one that Kennewick Man has devoted most of his 20th century existence to court, the subject of a lawsuit filed in Portland.

Believed to be one of the oldest and best preserved skeletons ever found in North America, Kennewick Man has whipped up a convoluted legal war. The combatants include five Native American tribes who seek to rebury the remains without study; the U.S. government, which repeatedly has sided with the Indians; eight well-respected scientists anxious to unlock clues to the peopling of the Americas; and a pagan, pre-Christian religious group which, like the tribes, is looking to lay claim to Kennewick Man.

For two years, Portland has been the battle's legal epicenter. Two local lawyers, Alan Schneider and Paula Barran, sided with science, filing a lawsuit against the government seeking the right to study Kennewick Man's skeletal remains much more thoroughly.

The suit was filed on behalf of the eight scientists who view Kennewick Man as a potential magnifying glass for the origin of modern American man. Before the government seized the skeleton on behalf of the tribes in 1996, initial reviews indicated that Kennewick Man possessed Asian and European features and might not be Indian at all.

Portland was determined to be a better venue for the litigation. Both lawyers live here, and they felt a Spokane lawsuit would be viewed as a battle against the tribes.

On June 27, 1997, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Jelderks stayed the case. He also called for a study of the remains to determine the skeleton's origin and which group might call him theirs, although no plaintiff was to take part in the research. Jelderks asked that the government first determine whether the skeleton was, in fact, Native American. If that proved to be true, the next step, he said, would be for the government to find out if the skeleton could be linked to a modern-day tribe.

He requested that the controversy be resolved in a "timely and orderly manner."

Two years, according to Schneider and Barran, is not particularly speedy, even in the eyes of the time-warped anthropologists and archaeologists they represent. Several of the plaintiffs, considered the best in their respective areas of study, are pushing 70. But they wait, because they must.

"Welcome to the Kennewick Man war room," Schneider said as he walks into his no-frills office on Southwest Columbia Avenue. "Talk about something that consumes one's life."

Although the pressure has eased some as they wait for the results of the government study, he continues to file data requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act and to outline future strategies for when the stay is lifted.

Already, he estimates, he and Barran have put in more than a half-million dollars in pro bono time. The government has spent about double that.

Schneider, an amateur archaeologist often tapped in cultural resource cases, got involved in the Kennewick Man case at the request of Doug Owsley, division head of physical anthropology for the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of Natural History. Owsley, who has helped identify remains in high profile cases such as Jeffrey Dahmer and the Branch Davidians, had just 19 hours to conduct a court-ordered inventory of Kennewick Man. He believes the skeleton warrants more scientific study.

Schneider, like Owsley, maintained the bones must be studied by more than those people hand-picked by the government. And he is arguing that under the First Amendment, Owsley and the other plaintiffs are extended not only the right to speak, but the right to send and receive information. Kennewick Man is one of a handful of skeletons that have been described as possessing features that are to some degree Caucasoid. They raise the controversial question whether Native Americans were the first people in the New World.

"I feel we need to win this case because what is at stake is the next generation," Owsley said in a phone call from his office at the Smithsonian. "It's not a personal agenda to see that skeleton. . . . We know so little about that time period. This is an opportunity to gain all kinds of information.

"If you put it into perspective, they used to have a very simple model as to the peopling of the Americas, and 11,500 years ago, the earliest Americans gave rise to a culture called Clovis. It's now becoming apparent that this model is very inadequate. It's far more complicated than one major migration."

Even the Asatru Folk Assembly, a group that practices a pre-christian Norse religion, believes Kennewick Man should be studied. The religious sect filed its lawsuit after hearing the skeleton showed Caucasoid characteristics. Like the Indians, Steve McNallen said the Asatru believe they have a duty to find out if Kennewick Man is related to the people of Europe. McNallen is the leader of the group, which is based in Nevada City, Calif., and counts about 500 members. The group has, however, lost its legal representation and is no longer an active participant in the lawsuit.

"We will wait for the results, but I think we now feel that it is very likely that European peoples have ancient roots on this continent, and we'd like to see that investigated further," McNallen said.

Owsley does not understand why the government has been so dogged in its opposition to scientific study by the plaintiffs.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers seized the remains shortly after the initial radio carbon dating on behalf of Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation, Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakima Nation, the Nez Perce Tribe, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and the Wanapum Band.

In addition, the Corps covered up the spot on the riverbank where Kennewick Man was found, making future entry difficult if not impossible. This action was taken even after a bill prohibiting it from doing so passed both houses of Congress and was awaiting the president's signature. The Corps, saying the law was on its side, spent $175,000 to cover the site with 2,000 tons of rocks and dirt.

In 1990, Congress granted Indians the right to reclaim their ancestors' remains and cultural artifacts. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act applied not only to skeletons and objects in museums but to new archaeological finds as well.

Armand Minthorn, a spokesman for the Umatilla tribe, told Congress his people view human remains as sacred and that he needed no scientific study to tell him the bones belong to his people. His religion and the teachings of his elders tell him that they were the first people. They want Kennewick Man back into the ground where they say he belongs.

"Some scientists say that if this individual is not studied further, we, as Indians, will be destroying evidence of our history. We already know our history," Minthorn said.

There are those who have learned of the Kennewick Man saga and argued the tribes fear a new migration theory will put their status as a sovereign nation at risk.

The government's position is that, if the remains are 700 years or older, they are considered Native American, although they do not necessarily belong to a particular tribe, said Stephanie Hanna of the Department of the Interior.

Hanna, who responded to phone calls placed to Allison Rumsey, the third U.S. Department of Justice lawyer to take on the Kennewick Man case, said the tests have been completed and the department is in the process of reviewing them. She said she had no idea when the results would be released because higher level officials have asked to be briefed. Asked if this was a common request, she replied: "Nothing about this case has been typical."

Barran, the litigator who has been working with Schneider, wholeheartedly agreed. She likened the government's actions to closing libraries and limiting access to knowledge. She does not in any way deny that the desecration of Indian graves occurred. Nor does she belittle their religious beliefs. Like the scientists she represents, she said she believes the bones should be given more than a one-time government study and a more certain future than reburial.

"I want to know who Kennewick Man is," she said. "I believe that is my right; it is the public's right."

That, of course, will be an issue for the courts to decide, and perhaps, a story Kennewick Man's skeleton will tell.

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