This journal article contained historical research about the repatriation of human remains, discovered in Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico, to the Jicarilla Apache and Ute Mountain Ute Native American tribes.  The researchers wanted to discover if the human remains were erroneously repatriated.  They explore whether a better course of action could have been taken during the evaluation process.  The remains were discovered as part of a mass burial in 1958.  The researchers explain that during their initial analysis by a physical anthropologist the remains were declared to be four adult males who died as a result of gunshot trauma.  The anthropologist wrote that the remains were of “American Indian, Spanish, and possibly Negro,” descent.  “They would be called ‘Mexicans’ in the sense of multiple racial admixture characterized in the Southwest.”  In 1990, the Fort Union National Monument museum began a process of evaluating any indigenous cultural affiliation of the remains as a result of the passing of NAGPRA.  The remains were reexamined and two were declared to be Native American and the other two as “admixed Caucasoid-Mongoloid.”  After further examinations, their heritage was determined to be culturally inconclusive but all four sets were repatriated to the local tribes due to the geography of the grave.  The authors argue that at least one human remain was not Native American and was in fact a New Mexico citizen.

The authors of this article relied on expert and cultural knowledge to perform this historical research.  They utilized reports of acts, behaviors, and events and their form of analysis was descriptive and qualitative.  The article raised an interesting topic of cases of erroneous repatriation and examining how historical cases leave room for error in their process.  However, the researchers’ tone comes off as slightly anti-NAGPRA in their rhetoric.

Spude, Catherine Holder, and Douglas D. Scott. “NAGPRA and Historical Research: Reevaluation of a Multiple Burial from Fort Union National Monument, New Mexico.” Historical        Archaeology 47, no. 4 (February 13, 2013): 121-36.