Gail Alexan­der

The hu­man bones un­earthed un­der the Red House date back to be­tween 430 AD and 1390 AD, ac­cord­ing to tests done in the US.In an up­date on the March dis­cov­ery–first re­port­ed by the T&T Guardian–the Par­lia­ment al­so said last Fri­day that a full-time ar­chae­o­log­i­cal team has been as­signed to the dig site for six months to look for fur­ther ma­te­r­i­al.

The Cab­i­net has al­so es­tab­lished a Red House Cul­tur­al Her­itage Team to man­age all as­pects of the his­tor­i­cal find and to en­sure con­for­mi­ty with best prac­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.The com­mit­tee is chaired by Speak­er Wade Mark and in­cludes Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al Trust.

The re­mains were un­earthed on March 26, dur­ing ini­tial ex­ca­va­tion work un­der­tak­en as part of the restora­tion of the Red House. A num­ber of skele­tal re­mains, cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal ar­ti­facts were found.Sub­se­quent­ly, a com­pos­ite of ma­te­r­i­al com­pris­ing hu­man bones, frag­ments of an­i­mal bones, shells, pot­tery and oth­er ar­ti­facts was al­so dis­cov­ered and ex­tract­ed from the soil in oth­er ar­eas at the Red House.

The Par­lia­ment con­se­quent­ly as­sem­bled an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ex­ca­va­tion team, head­ed by late ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris, along with oth­er qual­i­fied of­fi­cials from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, to over­see the re­moval of all hu­man skele­tal re­mains and ar­ti­facts dis­cov­ered at the test pits.The Par­lia­ment on Fri­day paid spe­cial trib­ute to Har­ris, who died on May 18, say­ing, "His ex­per­tise and knowl­edge pro­vid­ed the req­ui­site lead­er­ship need­ed dur­ing the ear­ly stages of the ex­ca­va­tion process."

Par­lia­ment said the sam­ples of the ex­ca­vat­ed re­mains were sent abroad for DNA test­ing and ra­dio­car­bon dat­ing to de­ter­mine the eth­nic­i­ty, gen­der and like­ly age of the bones. Tests were done at Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, New York and Be­ta An­a­lyt­ic Inc. Lab, Mi­a­mi.

Par­lia­ment al­so said, "As the dis­cov­ery of these hu­man re­mains and oth­er ar­ti­facts could sig­nal the ex­is­tence of oth­er his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al at the Red House, an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal re­search and res­cue ex­ca­va­tion team has been as­signed for a six-month pe­ri­od on a full-time ba­sis, from Mon­day 1st Ju­ly."Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the Red House Restora­tion Project will fo­cus on the com­ple­tion of es­sen­tial sur­veys and de­signs ahead of con­struc­tion works sched­uled to com­mence in Feb­ru­ary 2014."

Par­lia­ment said on­ly mi­nor nec­es­sary works would be un­der­tak­en at the Red House site dur­ing this pe­ri­od, un­der the su­per­vi­sion of the project's con­sul­tant his­tor­i­cal ar­chi­tect.The ar­chae­o­log­i­cal team is head­ed by ar­chae­ol­o­gist Dr Basil Reid and com­pris­es a site man­ag­er, two as­sis­tant site man­agers and 25 labour­ers. Spe­cial­ists in Amerindi­an and Eu­ro­pean pot­tery, zooan­thro­pol­o­gy, hu­man anato­my and soil test­ing are al­so on the team.

Par­lia­ment is al­so main­tain­ing con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­er groups, in par­tic­u­lar the first peo­ples com­mu­ni­ty, to en­sure the re­mains are treat­ed with the care and re­spect re­quired.