Skull found in Tooele likely belonged to Native American woman


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We now know a bit more about a skull that was discovered in the roof of a house in Tooele a couple of weeks ago.

The assistant state archeologist Ron Rood believes the skull belonged to a female Native American in her late teens or early twenties, who was small in body stature. There's still a lot more to be learned in this case, though.

Rood says something like this actually happens on a pretty regular basis. In fact, his office gets calls maybe once a month. The most recent was this case in Tooele County. Construction workers, on a remodeling job on a house, discovered a skull in the attic.

A forensic anthropologist determined that the skull was most likely that of an ancient Native American. "We're thinking that it's at least 100 years, but my gut, just looking at it, I'm thinking it's a least 1,000 years old," Rood said.

Skull found in Tooele likely belonged to Native American woman

Samples from the skull have been sent to a Florida lab, which will conduct radio-carbon tests, which will be able to pin down the age with 95 percent accuracy. When the report comes back, the seven Native American tribes in Utah will look at the data to determine if they wish to claim the remains for burial. If they don't, the state has a burial vault that was set up in the early 90s for cases such as this.

Rebecca Nelson, a research analyst with the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, said, "And if they're not claimed, they go into the vault. And we're in the process right now of working with some other state agencies to create some cemeteries to put these remains back into the ground."

Skull found in Tooele likely belonged to Native American woman

If the remains do end up unclaimed in the vault, Native American leaders will be asked to conduct a blessing at a ceremony.

Because ancient remains are discovered fairly regularly in Utah, Archeologist Ron Rood can learn a lot of things even before the carbon dating tests come back. For example, how did he know the skull belonged to a female? He told us, "Well, men have thicker skulls than females. It's true, men tend to have thicker brow ridges, larger mastoid, back part of the skull, and those are just more robust in males."

It'll be about a month before the radio-carbon tests are back from the Florida lab, and then we'll know more about when this Native American woman was alive.

As we said, remains are found often in Utah, many times at construction sites. If you should discover some, don't touch them, leave them in place, and call authorities.

E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com

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