The Army Corps of Engineers’ Memphis District and six Indian tribes signed an agreement Tuesday about the disposition and handling of human remains.
That includes any remains that may be unearthed by future activation of the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway.
Corps archeologists have identified nearly 250 archeological sites in the 11 thousand acres of the floodway that are most susceptible to flood damage.
Dr. Robert Dunn is an archeologist with the Corps. He says his organization consulted with tribal leaders to reach an agreement that calls for the respectful treatment of human remains.
“It calls for a damage assessment, primarily using remote sensing technology,” Dunn said. “It also calls for some on-the-ground inspection. And we’re basically committing ourselves to doing a site restoration for any site that’s damaged as a result of activation of the floodway, for example through scouring, the type of heavy erosion that’s caused by the release of the floodwaters.”
Corps archeologists say a minimum of 25 human skeletons were disturbed by last year’s intentional levee breach. They are all Mississippian-era remains that date from the 1400's or early 1500's.
Dunn says those remains came from an unknown archeological site.
“Only after the scouring took place did we realize that there was a Mississippian-age site buried in that levee. The remains were disturbed because of that. Obviously if we had known, we could have taken steps to prevent that, but we just did not know the site was there," Dunn said.
The Corps spent a quarter of a million dollars on restoration and relocating the levee around the site.
No other sites required restoration.