Gail Alexan­der

Hu­man bone frag­ments es­ti­mat­ed to be the re­mains of about four peo­ple have been dis­cov­ered un­der the Red House dur­ing restora­tion work there, Par­lia­ment and Ude­cott of­fi­cials say.Ar­chae­o­log­i­cal ex­perts say the re­mains and cer­tain ar­ti­facts al­so found at the site date back to Amerindi­an times–and there may be more, they added.

Ude­cott is su­per­vis­ing the restora­tion and ren­o­va­tion of the Red House. The project be­gan in 2011 and is pro­ject­ed to be com­plet­ed in 2014.Ude­cott's Rox­anne Sta­ple­ton- Whyms said the dis­cov­ery of the bones and ar­ti­facts was made last week Mon­day dur­ing a site vis­it by Ude­cott of­fi­cials and Par­lia­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives to the Red House.She said work on the project has in­volved dig­ging a num­ber of in­spec­tion pits on the ground floor.

Par­lia­ment of­fi­cials said this is to as­sess the foun­da­tion strength of the "old" Red House and test foun­da­tion strength for fu­ture con­struc­tion. Some pits be­ing dug are over ten feet deep.Sta­ple­ton-Whyms said dur­ing the site vis­it, the bone frag­ments were seen in the ex­ca­vat­ed ma­te­r­i­al of one of the pits in the ro­tun­da area of the Red House, in the mid­dle of the struc­ture. She said the bone frag­ments were tak­en by the Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment for test­ing.

On Tues­day Neil Jagges­sar, the Red House project li­ai­son of­fi­cer, and ar­chae­ol­o­gist Pe­ter Har­ris vis­it­ed the site to in­ves­ti­gate the bone frag­ments which were un­earthed."And ear­li­er to­day (yes­ter­day), the Of­fice of the Par­lia­ment ad­vised the bone and ar­ti­facts date back to the Amerindi­an era," Sta­ple­ton added.Jagges­sar added: "From all re­ports, it's a ma­jor his­tor­i­cal find.,"

Jagges­sar is a for­mer Clerk of the Par­lia­ment. Af­ter he re­tired last year he was ap­point­ed project ad­min­is­tra­tor for the Red House restora­tion project.Jagges­sar said a wide va­ri­ety of bones had been found in­clud­ing spinal col­umn pieces, leg and hand bones and skull parts with in­tact teeth. He said re­mains found could be those of about four peo­ple. Small pieces of clay items and what ap­peared to be part of a neck­lace were al­so found.He said Har­ris told Par­lia­ment tone of the items ap­peared to be an im­ple­ment to burn herbs in.

The Par­lia­ment has stored the bones and oth­er items in glass cas­es at its cur­rent Wa­ter­front lo­ca­tion.Jagges­sar said the Par­lia­ment has con­tact­ed the Di­vi­sion of Anato­my at Mt Hope to source ex­perts to ex­am­ine the bones, and al­so con­tact­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to as­cer­tain if his­to­ry shows any bur­ial ground in the area.

He said as soon as all re­sults are re­ceived Par­lia­ment will find fur­ther ex­perts to test the bones for in­for­ma­tion on the age and sex of the bod­ies from which they came, and ob­tain more in­for­ma­tion on what might have ex­ist­ed in the area.Jagges­sar said a Par­lia­ment team has start­ed work­ing on sift­ing the earth in the area where the re­mains were found to search for more items.He said the bones found so far have been sourced from one test pit hole on­ly, but it is be­lieved there are many more on the site.

The Par­lia­ment team will con­tin­ue work on this to­day.Har­ris, who has spe­cialised in T&T and re­gion­al ar­chae­ol­o­gy for many years, said it was a very in­ter­est­ing find, and with­in the three ex­ca­va­tion pits which had been made, work­ers had found the bones as well as Amerindi­an pot­tery and Gulf of Paria seashells.

Har­ris said: "The bones are those of about three or four peo­ple. The ma­te­r­i­al was not found in any de­fined way, but in quan­ti­ties around the area. We have the­o­ries in­clud­ing that the bones and shells may have been land­fill moved from the coastal area to the Red House lo­ca­tion and that would ac­count for the seashells."But what is clear is that it is def­i­nite­ly Amerindi­an re­mains judg­ing from two bits of ev­i­dence found."

Har­ris said one of these is the im­ple­ment to burn herbs, which had two small tubes and a bowl. He said this might have been used to sniff hal­lu­cino­genic herbs and was the type of im­ple­ment used by a tribe's chief or shaman.Har­ris will be tak­ing a team, in­clud­ing Ar­chae­ol­o­gy So­ci­ety mem­bers, back to the dig to­day, he said.

Jagges­sar added, "It's a fan­tas­tic find, par­tic­u­lar­ly since we'd planned that a mu­se­um would be one of the things the Red House will have when Par­lia­ment re­turns. This will be a sig­nif­i­cant part of that project."