Listeros:
Does anyone here have experience with the above topic?
Our museum has a small number (<50) of bones, which may or may not be human, recovered by collectors and relic hunters over the past 80+ years and donated to the SHU museum along with their arrow heads and axes. Essentially, they are "Culturally Unidentified Human Remains" (CUHR). We have submitted an inventory of them to the National Park Service (NPS) and they are included on their on-line data base
For many we have no provenience data at all. For some we have a state and county, and for a few we have a site name (e.g., a farm in the 1930s). Recent proposed changes by the NPS in the regulations on how it museums should deal with such CUHR will require that we contact the descendants of tribes who lived in the areas of discovery. However, except in a few obvious cases (a dog skull), in most cases we are not even sure that the bones are human, let alone Native.
We have considered the possibility of genetic testing to seek evidence of Native haplotypes/haplogroups.
Any thoughts?
Thomas Kavanagh, PhD
Seton Hall University Museum