LC 02 - Questionable Remains by Beverly Connor Page B

her belt and spied her trowel. He
obviously thought her to be a pot hunter-here to plunder
the site. She was opening her mouth to speak when he
gripped her arm. "I'm going down the trail. I'll escort you
back."
    Lindsay pulled her arm from him, stepped back, and held
out her hand. "I'm Dr. Chamberlain. I believe I'm expected."
    He was taken aback for a second, then took her hand and
shook it. "Oh, uh, yes. I'm sorry, Dr. Chamberlain, I thought
you were here looking for artifacts."

    Lindsay smiled. "I am, and please, call me Lindsay. Is
Jane close by?"
    "She's at the rock shelter," he said.
    "I'll go check in with her. What is your name, by the way?"
    "Gil Harris. I'm from the University of North Carolina."
    "Glad to meet you," she said and continued on her way
up the trail.
    Nearer the site, Lindsay saw several more students scattered here and there, working in small excavations in the
woods. The trail ended at a clearing below a rugged rockfaced bluff with a wide gaping hole in the side of the rock
wall. The roof of the rock shelter was a weathered gneiss
overhang that created a room about twenty feet wide and
ten feet deep from front to back. Jane was inside near the
rear of the shelter on her knees, working with her trowel.
Lindsay saw that they had dug two intersecting trenches in
the clearing outside the rock shelter. Each was about three
feet wide and ten feet long, and a couple of students were
working intently on something in one trench.
    "Hey, Jane," said Lindsay, walking up to the mouth of the
shelter.
    "Lindsay, you're here!" Jane jumped up to greet her. "Did
you have any trouble finding us?" Her blonde hair was tied
in a ponytail. Despite the fact they were working in heavy
shade, Jane's long limbs were tanned.
    "No, your directions were very good. What have you got
here?"
    Jane's blue eyes glittered. "Some really neat stuff. Digging
is kind of hard with all this vegetation, but using a little
logic, we've been pretty lucky. We're excavating most of the
cave," Jane said, then pointed out into the woods. "We went
over the area with a metal detector and found some interesting things. We're turning up some good refuse pits."
    Lindsay laid down her pack by a tree and followed Jane
inside the shelter. Against one wall were two wooden crates
for transporting artifacts. Jane pointed to the boxes.

    "We haven't found a large quantity of stuff, but what we
have found is kind of neat: lead balls, iron crossbow bolt
tips, ax heads, and what we think is the trigger mechanism
for a harquebus. In the lower levels of the trenches we think
we've found some Archaic stuff."
    "Archaic and historic-nothing in between?"
    Jane shook her head. "From the looks of the trench cross
section, the shelter was subject to periodic flooding over the
years."
    "That's a neat collection of historic items. Where are you
finding the things. In the cave or around it?"
    "I'm excavating a cache of bolt heads in the cave right
now. The musket trigger was found about ten meters away
in the clearing outside the shelter. We found the ax by accident. Mike, one of the student workers, was taking a leak in
the woods. He had his metal detector with him and did a
quick sweep."
    Lindsay smiled. "It would be interesting if that was how
it was lost in the first place."
    "Wouldn't it? We're finding some bones, too." Jane
looked suddenly grim. "A couple of human teeth, bones of
a left arm, and a right leg."
    Lindsay raised her eyebrows. "Amputations?"
    "We think so," said Jane. "We thought you could have a
look."
    "Sure. Sounds like a group of conquistadores resting up
after a battle. Any indication of how many there were?"
    Jane shook her head, but Lindsay saw a faint smile on her
face. "Not yet, but we suspect around twenty." Lindsay was
surprised that she could come up with a number, but before
she could ask a question, Jane pointed to a young darkhaired woman bent over an excavation just outside the shelter. "Over