LC 02 - Questionable Remains by Beverly Connor Page A

a bad attitude."
    "Really?" Lindsay smiled. "I've had a lot of practice lately with hostility."
    "I'll bet. Seen any more of the lawyer person?"
    "As a matter of fact, yes. And in the strangest place. I'll
tell you about it over lunch."
    Sally took Lindsay across to where digging was underway. They didn't have a laboratory at the site, so everything
found was bagged and stored. At the end of each week
Brian or another student took the week's findings to the lab
at the University of Georgia.
    Brian was squatting by a pit. Lindsay had been on several digs with Brian-Sally, too-but she hadn't seen him in
several months. He looked good, deeply tanned, his blond
hair already bleached by the sun. He looked up when they
approached.
    "Lindsay." He jumped up and gave her a hug. "Glad
you're finally here. We've got some interesting things."
    "Looks like it." In the pit that was being excavated she
saw the shiny surfaces of large mica sheets glistening in the
sun. From all the greenish substance in the dirt, there
appeared to be a sizable cache of copper. To the side, a clay
pot was being uncovered, revealing a fill of small round
nodules that appeared to be freshwater pearls.
    "Is this a burial?" she asked Brian.
    "If it is, then this has to be the chief of the whole continent. I've never seen so many grave goods. Funny, it didn't
look like a burial outline; it was a little too large and round.
I guess we'll just have to see if there's bone under all this stuff." He turned to the diggers. "Be careful with the copper.
There might be fragile wood or something adhered to it."

    "Quite a find," said Lindsay.
    "I'll say," said Brian. "There's lots of history in this site.
The test trenches show several layers of habitation. Early
on, it looks like this was a pretty wealthy place. That structure," he pointed to a gridded section of the site, "is one of
the earliest, judging from the style of pot sherds in it. It's full
of artifacts. We've found a few early burials, too, with a
wealth of grave goods. The later burials have fewer goods
in them. Gerri says the later burials look like a younger population, too. The very latest burials have a disproportionate
number of women and children."
    "Sounds like disease followed by conquest," said Lindsay.
    Brian nodded. "Then we find this pit. From the design of
the pot, it looks contemporaneous with the last habitations."
    "Have you been able to connect this site with any historical descriptions?" Lindsay asked him.
    Brian shook his head. "No. But I'm still looking. To date
we haven't found any European artifacts, but we did find a
cluster of burials that appear to have battle wounds. Like I
said, a lot of them are women and children. This is the first
sign of hostility we've seen here. I'd like you to have a look
at the bones."
    "Sure."
    Brian turned and led Lindsay a few feet to a cluster of
burials. "It's not all excavated yet," he said. "But it looks
like these individuals may all have been buried around the
same time."
    The first group of burials had been photographed,
mapped, sketched, and notated. The diggers were removing
the bones, wrapping them in sheets of cotton and laying
them in numbered boxes, one skeleton per box. Some small
odd bones they were putting in separate numbered cartons.
Brian introduced Lindsay to Gerri Chapman, who stood,
wiped her hands on her jeans, and took Lindsay's hand. She was a short woman, about five feet four inches, with curly
red hair and freckles.

    "I believe we met at the Southwestern Archaeology
Conference," Gerri said, and Lindsay remembered. She had
missed the paper Gerri gave but had met her at lunch.
    "Yes. We did. Glad to see you again. You're a long way
from the southwest."
    "Sure am. It's good to get variety. What do you think of
this site? Interesting, huh?"
    "Indeed it is. Brian said you had some medieval battle
wounds."
    "I believe so. Have a look."
    Lindsay squatted down and examined a semiflexed skeleton