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Recently Discovered Native American Artifact Carries Questions About Origin

The discovery of a rare Native American artifact in the southern Ohio village of Newtown has raised questions about it's origin. Bill Rinehart of member station WVXU in Cincinnati reports.

As contractors dug a trench for a fiber optic box, north of Newtown’s administrative hall earlier this month, they found human remains.  They called police, who quickly realized it was a burial site, and not a crime scene.  They in turn, called the Cincinnati Museum Center.  Rieveschl Curator for Archeology Bob Genheimer:

"When the police department actually called us, when I talked to him, he said they had found some human remains, and he said there had been a plate with it. And I kind of knew exactly what he meant, because we had found these other two back in 1981."

Genheimer says the plate is a gorget, an ornamental seashell, with the image of an animal carved on it.  But there are questions.  The shell itself is believed to have come from the Gulf Coast, or the southern Atlantic region.

"It's a good question how these got up here.  Obviously. it's probably trade; we don't think anyone from here went down and got them.  One of the real questions is where were they engraved.  Were they engraved somewhere in the southeast, where the shell came from?  Or was the shell brought up here and they were engraved here?  And we really don't know the answer to that."

Two other gorgets found in Newtown had images of an opossum and a panther carved on them.  This one had a hybrid: part bird, part cat.

"Anywhere else in the world, you would refer to as a gryphon.  But that's not something that's very viable in the Americas.  We believe that the bird may be a Carolina parakeet, which as many people know is now an extinct bird, but used to be prevalent in the southern United States and as far north as here." 

Genheimer says the gorget dates to the Fifth Century. The remains found with the gorget have been reported as required by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and could be claimed for reburial by a tribe.  Archeologists at the Museum are studying the gorget and hoping to make a replica for display.

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