Rhon­dor Dowlat

Re­sults from the DNA tests con­firmed that the sam­ples of bones, which were dis­cov­ered along with cul­tur­al arte­facts dur­ing the ex­ca­va­tion phase of the Red House in Port-of-Spain, be­longed to peo­ple liv­ing in Trinidad and parts of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca dur­ing the pe­ri­od AD 990 to AD 1400.Speak­er Wade Mark re­vealed this on Fri­day in Par­lia­ment dur­ing his state­ment up­date on the Red House Restora­tion Project.

Up­on re­ceipt of the re­sults of the ra­dio­car­bon dat­ing, the Cab­i­net was in­formed and The Red House His­tor­i­cal Cul­tur­al Her­itage Team was es­tab­lished to man­age all as­pects of the his­tor­i­cal finds, and to en­sure con­for­mi­ty with best prac­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al pro­to­cols for such ma­te­r­i­al.This com­mit­tee is chaired by Mark and com­pris­es mem­bers of all stake­hold­er groups.

Due to the pass­ing of ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris, the Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment se­cured the ser­vices of Dr Basil Reid, se­nior lec­tur­er in Ar­chae­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Work com­menced un­der Dr Reid on Ju­ly 1, 2013, and in­volved ex­ca­va­tion and pro­cess­ing of all ar­ti­facts and bi­o­log­i­cal re­mains.

Over the past year, Dr Reid has de­vel­oped a net­work of spe­cial­ists in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines to pro­vide as­sis­tance when need­ed. Re­search part­ner­ships have been es­tab­lished with aca­d­e­mics in the USA and Eu­rope.

Mark dis­closed that the Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment has al­so signed an agree­ment with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Flori­da. This will fa­cil­i­tate a vis­it by Dr John Schultz, foren­sic an­thro­pol­o­gist and an as­sis­tant who will vis­it Trinidad for two weeks in ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2015 to ex­am­ine and con­duct tests on the skele­tons and bones found.

"At the con­clu­sion of the project, an aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tion will be com­piled and pub­lished, pos­si­bly by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Press or an al­ter­na­tive pub­lish­er." All in­for­ma­tion gath­ered will be passed on to the Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal Sub-Com­mit­tee of the Na­tion­al Trust of T&T.Mark said ex­ca­va­tion works to a depth of 1.5 me­tres have al­ready been com­plet­ed and there have been some sig­nif­i­cant finds, in­clud­ing:

�2 Six com­plete skele­tons,

�2 36 in­com­plete skele­tons,

�2 A com­plete skull in a pot,

�2 Sev­er­al coins, the most valu­able of which is a one dol­lar US gold lus­tre coin.

"In har­mo­ny with their re­quests, the First Peo­ples' have been al­lowed to hold re­li­gious cer­e­monies on the grounds of the Red House and the Cab­i­net ap­point­ed com­mit­tee has agreed in prin­ci­ple that all the re­mains of the First Peo­ples' should be in­terned on the grounds of the Red House with an ap­pro­pri­ate sign in­di­cat­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the area." Di­a­logue with these groups are con­tin­u­ing.

A small group of work­ers, main­ly uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, are cur­rent­ly at the Red House en­gag­ing in the fi­nal clean­ing and cat­a­logu­ing of the finds. The first phase of the ar­chae­o­log­i­cal eight project is sched­uled to be com­plet­ed by Jan­u­ary 31, 2015, and is on time, Mark stat­ed.The Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment and Ude­cott, project man­agers for the Red House Restora­tion Project have re­cent­ly ar­rived at con­sen­sus for a com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy in re­spect of the project.

back­ground in­fo

On March 26, 2013, cul­tur­al re­mains, which in­clud­ed bones re­sem­bling that of hu­mans were dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ex­ca­va­tion of a "Test Pit" named CEP 13 in the north ro­tun­da area of the Red House. With­in days, a sim­i­lar dis­cov­ery was made in an­oth­er "Test Pit" BM5 lo­cat­ed un­der the north par­lia­men­tary cham­ber.The Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment took the fol­low­ing steps:

�2 Con­vened a meet­ing at the Red House site with stake­hold­ers, which in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the San­ta Rosa Carib Com­mu­ni­ty and the late ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris among oth­ers;

�2 The re­mains were ex­am­ined by foren­sic pathol­o­gist Dr Valery Alexan­drov who con­firmed that hu­man bones and oth­er hu­man skele­tal re­mains were among the re­mains shown to him;

�2 Homi­cide Di­vi­sion vis­it­ed the scene and per­mit­ted ex­ca­va­tion work to con­tin­ue as they were of the view that it was not a crime scene;

�2 A team care­ful­ly re­trieve all hu­man skele­tal re­mains and ar­ti­facts dis­cov­ered in all in­spec­tion units.

�2 Con­vened an­oth­er meet­ing with stake­hold­ers which in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Na­tion­al Trust of T&T, the Red House project con­sul­tants, and the three rep­re­sen­ta­tive groups of the T&T Amerindi­an and First Peo­ples' Com­mu­ni­ties.

�2 Arranged for sam­ples of the hu­man re­mains to be analysed us­ing DNA at the Mer­ri­wether An­cient DNA and Foren­sic Lab, Bing­ham­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, New York, and for Ra­dio­car­bon dat­ing (C14 test­ing) and N15/N14 test­ing to be con­duct­ed by Be­ta An­a­lyt­ic Inc Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Mi­a­mi, Flori­da.