How Arizona finds the home of human remains

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]The bones found earlier this month in the foothills created quite the mystery, but the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office determined that those human remains were prehistoric.

[00:00:08]>> And let's bring back KVOA 9's Alex Dowd now in the studio to walk us through the whole process of them finding out who these bones belong to and then getting them home. Well, it actually happens more than you'd think that human remains are found and normally that flies under the radar. Dr. Watson, who's the bio-archaeology curator at the Arizona State Museum, says that he's called in about a dozen times a year to excavate found archaeological remains. Now, usually they're found when they're accidentally dug up through development or construction projects, but no matter how they're found, the following steps stay the same.

[00:00:40]When archaeological remains are found and we estimate that they're of a Native American ancestry, we contact the tribes. That's the direction Dr. James Watson took when human remains were discovered near the Catalina foothills.

[00:00:52]Moving quickly, he said, to protect the descendant community. Cultural sensitivities are important manage in these cases and the discovery disturbance desecration of ancestral Native American graves has a a long history in the United States.

[00:01:07]>> The area was a known archaeological site, so the next step was identifying surrounding artifacts. Where was located within the riverbank, for example, that it was buried relatively deeply versus close to the surface. There were some objects in the area, artifacts, ceramic sherds that were clearly associated with the Hohokam archaeological culture.

[00:01:29]Claimant maps from the Arizona government-to-government consultation toolkit showed that the site could either belong to Tohono O'odham Nation or the Pascua Yaqui tribe. After returning the remains, the site is brought back to its natural state, erasing all evidence of a dig to protect anything else that might be left behind.

[00:01:47]>> There's the potential for not just remains in the area, but our cultural resources, and we don't want people going around and digging through archaeological sites. That's actually a violation of state law. So, places of rest can remain at rest.

[00:02:00]If you're on a hike and you find what looks like human remains, Dr. Watson says the first step is to call the authorities. Under the Arizona Antiquities Act, human remains or burial artifacts found on state or private land both need to be reported to the Arizona State Museum. In studio, Alex Dowd, KOLD 9.