The AP had this item a few days ago about a bill introduced in Congress to amend the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). You can read more about NAGPRA here at a National Park Service site. NAGPRA was enacted in 1990 to allow Native American tribes to reclaim and rebury the remains of their ancestors who have been recovered in archaeological investigations.
When the skeleton we now call Kennewick Man was discovered in Washington state in 1996, his remains were claimed by the Umatilla Tribe under NAGPRA. When Kennewick Man turned out to be 9,000 years old, and his skeletal features did not correlate with any known Native Americans, a group of scientists sued the Federal government, saying that the Umatilla could not scientifically prove any relationship with him. That turned into a nine-year legal battle that the scientists eventually won.
The amendment to NAGPRA, to be introduced by Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, would exempt very old remains like Kennewick Man from the law, so that they can be studied in the future without the legal wrangling just concluded. It sounds like a sensible change in the law to me.
It's interesting that this came up, as Connie and I attended a lecture last week by Dr. Tom Stafford at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Stafford is part of the team studying the Kennewick remains, and was one of the researchers who visited the find site in 1997 before it was destroyed by the Corps of Engineers. His lecture of course was on Kennewick Man and his role in the ongoing research.
He didn't have a lot more new information than we had heard in a lecture last Spring from Doug Owsley, head of the team, that I posted on here. He did say that he had just received a new radiocarbon date of 8410 BP, which when calibrated will work out to about 9000 BP. There has been some speculation that more careful dating could push back the age of Kennewick Man, but Stafford feels this latest result puts that to rest. He did talk about some future analysis that he will be conducting on the remains: another attempt to recover DNA (earlier ones have failed) and oxygen isotope ratio analysis that will tell us about Kennewick Man's diet.
Stafford was in town because he had been working with Dr. John Johnson of the SBMNH on his research on the Arlington Woman find site, on Santa Rosa Island, just off the coast here. Arlington Woman has been dated to 13,400 years BP, making these the oldest remains found thus far in North America. I will report more on that project as I find out about it.
2 comments:
Yes please do tell more when you get it. This is fascinating.
When the hearings about the K-Man were being held, I was in Portland so I attended some of them. They were not as frivolous or political as the media seemed to find them. The rep of the tribes had some very potent questions about how we treat remains. He began by asking us if we approved of organ transplants and how many in the room had actually completed organ donor cards. It was a liberal crowd -- lots of hands.
Then he abruptly took us to the Chinese practice of shooting "criminals" and parting them out for big bucks.
At that time the guy who "plastinates" dissected remains and poses them in cute ways had not prepared his exhibit.
Hmmm. But I'm as eager as the next one to find out what we can.
Prairie Mary
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