Fifield, an experienced liaison between the Forest Service and the Tlingit and Haida Native groups of the area, began that evening to contact the sovereign tribal governments that would be affected by the discovery of a possible ancestor, starting in motion a government-to-government consultation process that was to define the research and analysis to follow. Recognizing its cultural and potential historical significance, and his responsibilities under the newly implemented Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Heaton ceased work on the excavation and put out a radio message to Tongass National Forest archaeologist Terry Fifield in Craig, 75 miles to the south, urging him “to visit the site ASAP.” Fifield hijacked a Forest Service contract helicopter the next day, flew into the rocky shore of Protection Head and hiked to the cave to take photos, inspect the site firsthand and take possession of the cultural materials, as required by NAGPRA. On that day in July, he was working in a wet corner of the “bear” chamber, at a depth below previous excavations, when he came across a human mandible, two loose human teeth, a few ribs, a fragment of a pelvis and a tool created of bone. In an effort to reconstruct the coastal ecosystem of that late Pleistocene epoch going forward, Heaton returned subsequent years with paleobiologist Frederick Grady of the Smithsonian to recover the remains of other mammals, including seal, vole, fox and marmot. The bones were an intriguing find as they were subsequently carbon dated at approximately 35,000 to 41,000 years old, a timeframe prior to the end of the last glacial period when no brown bears were known to exist in the region. The site, named On Your Knees Cave due to its low ceiling and tight crawl space, had yielded fragments of bear bones four years earlier during a karst vulnerability survey, a survey of sinkholes, springs and caves for a planned timber sale. Timothy Heaton, a paleontologist from the University of South Dakota, was completing a two-week excavation in a small, dark cave on Protection Head, a remote location on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska.

Skull wars by david hurst thomas