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Thursday evening a skeleton was discovered by my neighbor while digging a new foundation trench. Unfortunately he had caused considerable damage to the remains before realizing the nature of the obstacle. I decided to recover the remains even so, as the bones, however old and fragile were quite complete. This work was further complicated by the fact that approximately half of the bones were directly under the cement of the present house foundations. Thus any sort of systematic excavation impossible, therefore I recovered the bones without many of the usual preliminary measurements or precautions, it would appear as though the body was placed in a flexed position with the head towards the north. The body was buried about 40 centimeters below the surface in clean sand. Above the clean sand was a layer of fire pit blackened sand, this layer which was exposed by the trench showed wide fluctuations ranging from being 30 cm thick to 20 above the remains and diminished to nil a few meters distant. above this layer was a very thin lens of clean sand another layer of grey sand and soil about 5-10 cm thick this layer was evident all along the trench. this grey layer was covered with yet another layer of clean sand about 10cm thick and a final covering of grass made up the last 5-10 cm, the last layers being probably related to 'recent' house construction. The skull and upper spine where well preserved however much damaged during the trench work. while other parts had been disturbed and more thoroughly decomposed due to the presence of roots. No grave goods were found other than a few irregular basalt flakes which may have accidentally slipped into the burial pit. A description of the actual skeletal remains may be undertaken later however to briefly summarize some relevant initial observations: the body appears to have been of an adult with fully developed teeth, most of which may have been intact at the time of death, these showed no signs of decay, although some were wear damaged. Some bones may have been missing at the time of the burial and some of the long bones seemed unnaturally stacked together, the spinal column was intact at the time of burial. Sunday 25th of March. After sorting out all the recovered bones, it soon became apparent that a number were missing as well as teeth and an important part of the mandible (left ramus) and so I returned to sift the excavated sand with a fine screen. Fortunately the ramus was recovered along with a lower third molar and a few assorted small fragments of broken bone. In as much as the bones form the upper body that were recovered were fairly well preserved the utter lack of any sign of either humerus, shoulder ... |
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