Researchers will need several months to determine the ethnicity of the 10 Colonial-era remains unearthed from an unmarked cemetery during a Sussex County sewer dig, while 18 more sets of remains have turned up at the site -- and many more may still be buried in the ground.
Five sets of remains have been sent to the Smithsonian for testing and analysis to determine if the graveyard was the final resting place for European farmers, slaves or American Indians.
The remaining 23 sets will stay in the ground underneath River Road, near Oak Orchard, laid back to rest and covered by the road, which has run over the site since the 1940s. Authorities do not know the boundaries of the unmarked cemetery, which likely runs under some houses along the road, and have chosen to disturb it as little as possible. As many as 60 people could lie there, Sussex County officials say.
The county's new plan for the much-delayed sewer project -- extending service to about 25 houses along the road near the Indian River Bay -- is to run a pipe four feet underneath the level of the burials, a little more than eight feet deep total.
The "jack and bore" system will allow the homeowners to finally get sewer service without requiring that the other remains be dug up, County Engineer Mike Izzo said. It was the cheaper of the two options, costing about $85,000 versus the $185,000 that a full excavation and removal of all 28 sets of remains would cost, he said.
Research dates the site to between 1690 and 1740, said Dan Parsons, the county's historical preservation planner.
"It's a very old site," he said. "Unfortunately, the worst-case scenario is that we hit a cemetery."
He said there is also a historical reason for leaving the area as-is for now.
"What we want to do is mitigate the effect to the site so in the future, people could study it and analyze it," Parsons said. "We would want to leave the site as intact as we possibly can for future purposes, for posterity."
Representatives of the Nanticoke Indian tribe have been consulted and, after receiving assurances that the pipe running underneath the cemetery would be covered with a sleeve and placed deep enough to protect the bodies in case of a pipe failure, agreed that boring down was the best option.
Authorities do not know if the bones are those of American Indians, European settlers or slaves, as the area was home to all three groups around that time. The Nanticokes moved from the Chesapeake Bay region into Indian River Hundred in the 1600s, and Europeans are known to have settled along the Indian River as early as 1677 -- starting with the Burton family, still prominent in Sussex County today.
Once the sewer connections are finished, the small group of residents along River Road will be able to get the service that about 900 of their neighbors started receiving in 2006 and will be able to unhook from individual septic systems. The county long has had a goal of eliminating older, leaky septic systems that can pollute the Inland Bays.
The county rejected three alternatives for the sewer project -- excavating and removing all the remains; relocating the sewer line around some of the homes, which would require a new archaeological survey; or discontinuing the project, which would leave about 20 homes without sewer connections.
Officials have said that because the bodies were oriented east to west, facing the east, that may be an indicator that it was a Christian burial site. And while the graves may date back to the 1700s, they could cover a range of years.
The sewer project along River Road was halted previously when one set of remains was found seven years ago. The county attempted to use ground-penetrating radar to determine if there were others buried in the area and to map out a safe route for the sewer pipeline, but the results were inconclusive, Izzo said.
Author: Dan Shortridge | Source: Delaware Online [December 05, 2010]