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No bones about it: Buyer got human remains at GMS auction |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Thursday, 16 June 2005 |
By CRAIG FOX
Times Staff Writer
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Finger Lakes Community College instructor John Van Niel was definitely interested in a small cardboard box labeled “animal bones†when he saw it during an April auction at the old Geneva Middle School.
But the box really piqued his interest after he noticed a human femur protruding through a bag in the box, he recalled yesterday.
Van Niel thought the items would make good teaching tools, so he made sure to outbid another man, ending up a winning nod of $50. However, it wasn’t until he got home that Van Niel realized the crumpled-up bag contained far more than a wayward femur.
It was actually a set of several human bones — including four ribs, a tooth, pieces of a jaw, two femurs and an assortment of other parts. What’s more is that they all seemed to be from the same person, Van Niel said, adding that they were similar in coloring and condition.
“You don’t normally find a bunch of bones in a bag,†Van Niel said, looking at the set spread out on a kitchen table in Macedon Tuesday afternoon.
He didn’t notice until much later that the bag contained the words “bones†and “Indian†on it.
But where did they come from? And why were they included in a cardboard box with a bunch of other natural science items? How did they end up at the old middle school and the April 20 auction?
It’s a mystery that Van Niel, an associate professor of environmental conservation, would love to solve, he said.
Van Niel turned to a colleague, Ann E.W. Morton, an adjunct instructor of archaeology at FLCC, figuring she could help identify the origin of the bones.
They’ve been working together to find out where they came from and exactly how they ended up at the now-closed school.
With her archaeology experience, Morton immediately determined they were human from looking at the femurs and the jaw bones. No other species has bones that look like that, she said.
Morton also got the help from friend Marie-Lorraine Pipes, an animal bone expert. Examining the hip bone and jaw samples, Pipes concluded the bones were from an elderly woman, Morton said.
“She was very, very elderly and lived a long time,†Morton said. “She also lived a very physical, very hard life.â€
They surmised that the bones may have been from an American Indian, but, at this point, they have no proof.
The next step is getting a forensics expert involved to determine whether they, indeed, came from the same person, Morton said adding that they may also be able to get a better idea of ethnicity.
She also contacted friends at the state Office of Historic Preservation and the Rochester Museum and Science Center about getting information about Indian burial sites in and around Geneva.
After looking into it, historic preservation program analyst Doug Mackey found some information about a burial site on a farm near Sand Hill Cemetery along Routes 5&20.
To protect the bones from further damage, Morton has been keeping them in a larger cardboard box at her Macedon Center Road home.
Meanwhile, Van Niel, who has collected 400 animal skulls over the years, hopes to determine how they ended up at the auction and why they were at the school in the first place.
It’s been an exciting adventure for Van Niel, who was also involved a big find while teaching in Hawaii several years ago. He found a bone on a beach that resulted in a dig that unearthed a 400-year-old Hawaiian burial site.
Even before getting the archaeologist involved in the mystery, Van Niel went to the Internet to tell his story in the hopes someone would know something. That information initially went out to about 50 people.
Two days later, Genevan Jean Bub, 69, a 1951 Geneva High School graduate, wrote him an e-mail about a popular biology teacher at the old middle school named Dr. Beulah Glasgow. She had the teacher as a freshman in 1948.
Contacted Tuesday night, Bub said that the teacher had a “nature museum†with a variety of fascinating items such as stuffed birds and possibly some live animals. The nature museum may have had some bones, Bub speculated.
Glasgow, whose husband was a scientist at the state Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, was “an earth mother†to foreign students at the experiment station, she said.
“She was a wonderful teacher, very enthusiastic and had every confidence in the world in children,†Bub said.
Perhaps the box of natural science artifacts could be from Glasgow’s nature museum, Van Niel said. It contained some unusual items, such as a shoe box of fibers from all over the world and a sperm whale tooth that was made into a pestle, a tool for grinding.
The pestle “is an unusual item†that Morton has never seen before during all her digs as an archaeologist. It’s probably an American Indian tool, but it may have been made by a white settler, Morton said.
“There’s no guarantee that the bones and pestle are related,†Van Niel said.
But Bub has another connection to the story of the bones. That Indian burial site found along Routes 5&20 was actually on her father’s farm, she said.
Bub has even kept an old Geneva Times newspaper clipping from June 11, 1937, with a story about how a construction crew working on Routes 5&20 found an Indian burial site with one full skeleton and pieces of skeletal remains from 12 to 15 graves.
“All of this is very speculative on my part,†Bub said. “It may be a series of potential relationships, that’s all I can say.â€
Van Niel and Morton hope that someone comes forward who can solve the mystery.
If they can determine if the woman was an Iroquois Indian, they hope to find out the tribe to which she belonged and where she might have been buried, they said. The remains would then be reburied at that spot with the help of tribe members, Morton said.
If it ends up they conclude the woman is a Euro-American settler, the pair of FLCC professors would take the necessary steps to get the remains to a museum, Morton said.
A big reason that Van Niel wanted to be the successful bidder at the middle school auction that day was to ensure the bones didn’t end up in the wrong hands, with someone who would not use them for proper scientific purposes, Morton said.
Besides the obvious class teachings, both professors plan to use the adventure to teach their students about ethics in science, they said. Van Niel is also using it to teach his 9-year-old daughter, Danika, about respecting all cultures, he said.
“These are not my bones,†he said. “We’re just their caretakers.â€
If you have any information about the bones or Glasgow, you can contract Van Niel at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or Morton at
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http://www.fltimes.com/Main.asp?SectionID=38&SubSectionID=121&ArticleID=8691 |
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Taphophilia?
taphophilia (taf′ō-fil′ē-ă)
ORIGIN:
From the Greek words taphos, meaning "tomb" or "sepulcher" and philia, meaning "attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something"
DEFINITION: 1. An excessive interest in graves and cemeteries. 2. A love or fondness for funerals, graves, and cemeteries. 3. In psychiatry, a morbid attraction to graves and cemeteries
Quote Repository
“That is not dead which can eternal lie / And with strange aeons even death may die.” H.P. Lovecraft Quoting the
Shirtless and Sculpted
The Men of Mortuaries 2008 Calendar is now available! All sale proceeds benefit KAMMCARES, a breast cancer foundation.
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