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... blades, sternum or upper rib cage, collar bone etc, seemed rather odd and so I extended the original excavation but didn't find the missing bones. However a number of basalt flakes were recovered while sifting the excavated sand. George Tatarata who first discovered the burial, suggested that these flakes were found associated with the remains. One is a small, worked flake, which shows blunting and may have served as a cutting implement. This artifact is well patinated and exhibits calcium deposits, and however insignificant such a find may seem, it gives rise to the possibility that the burial may be from an early period. In researching the known burials which may exhibit similarities we find that at one of the Maupiti burials where the body was interred from 20 to 40 cm deep in humis bearing sandy soil, the authors note that the pelvic bones, vertebrae, most of the ribs, and the symphysis of the long bones had completely disintegrated, while the long bones were in a most fragile condition. However of 11 other burials reported "the bones of most other skeletons were in a fair state of preservation, none of them as fragile as those of the first burial excavated". Bellwood (1979) indicates radiocarbon dates for the Maupiti burials range from 800-1200 A.D. It may be that skeletal remains placed in relatively sterile coral sand could remain reasonably intact for over 1000 years. If we find in these Tubuai remains an fairly advanced level of deterioration then again one must consider the possibility that these remains are indeed ancient. The pelvic region, sacrum, pubic joint, and many of the vertebrae being either wholly dissolved or in a fragile crumbling condition. Even though it be noted that some bones may have been absent at the time of burial, many others which were probably intact have long since disintegrated.. There is adequate proof that the individual buried was fully adult and that a lack of bone fusion cannot be listed as a cause of the advanced state of bone deterioration.. On Saturday another skeleton was encountered during the continued trench excavations (about 5 meters west of the first). These remains proved even more fragile than the those described above, and the first bones exposed crumbled even in the initial attempts to localize the nature and extent of the burial. The humid sand well compacted about the bones could not be easily dislodged without the bones breaking. In as much as the area had previously been disturbed by house building, the stratified deposits would reveal little, indeed a buried electric wire passed within 10 centimeters of the remains. Given the fragile nature of the bones and the inconvenient location of the burial (about one meter from foundations) I elected to remove the bones with a minimum amount of procedure, (weather (rain), time, and local curiosity all conspiring to a quick...
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