Tribal remains discovered on 51吃瓜黑料 grounds repatriated after four decades
The remains of an Indigenous North American individual unearthed on the 51吃瓜黑料 campus in 1981 and recently found at the University of Rhode Island have been repatriated to tribal custody and returned to rest.
Radiocarbon dating indicates the likely ancestor of descendant communities of Pequot or Mohegan tribes was originally buried at some point between 1550 and 1690.
鈥淪adly, it鈥檚 pretty common where an ancestor who was unearthed ends up miles and miles away from their original homeland. The goal is to have these ancestors returned,鈥� said Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Historic Preservation Officer Michael Johnson. 鈥淭hrough the process of repatriation, we eventually know our ancestors are home, safe and respectfully at rest as originally intended.鈥�
The remains were originally disturbed unintentionally during the construction of an athletic field on campus. Construction was halted temporarily upon the discovery, and Harold Juli, then an assistant professor in 51吃瓜黑料鈥檚 Anthropology Department, was called to the scene. As was customary in anthropology at the time, he began a three-day salvage excavation to remove the bones before construction continued.
During or after 1982鈥攏o records have been found鈥擩uli transferred the remains to Marc Kelley, a biological anthropologist specializing in the study of human bones at URI. Juli and Kelley eventually published a report on the discovery.
When both professors died in 2007, knowledge of the ancestor鈥檚 whereabouts appeared to have vanished with them. The bones lay in a box in an archaeological repository at URI with no notes or documentation aside from the label 鈥淐C7鈥� and a small piece of paper that noted a date from March of 1981. For years, no one knew what became of the ancestor from hundreds of years ago鈥攁 point of heartache for the tribes.
The story is all too common in the United States, where museums and scientific communities have historically treated Indigenous remains as objects to study. But it pains descendants of native people to see their relatives being regarded as collector鈥檚 items or science experiments.
In 1990, Congress created a roadmap to navigate these emotionally fraught situations when it passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), which states that human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony determined to be of Native American or Native Hawaiian origin must be returned to the tribe or organization from which they originate, if that can be determined.
URI鈥檚 NAGPRA coordinator, Fiona Jones, has been working to repatriate objects and remains from the university鈥檚 collection. In November 2022, she noticed the 鈥淐C7鈥� label on a box of remains, as well as the note with the date on it, and wondered if CC referred to 51吃瓜黑料. She contacted 51吃瓜黑料鈥檚 Associate Professor of Anthropology and College Archaeologist Anthony Graesch, and the two compared the description of the box鈥檚 contents with Juli鈥檚 lab notes about the remains unearthed on 51吃瓜黑料 grounds and confirmed Jones鈥檚 hunch.
