A project underway to restore the Everglades is threatening to destroy historic sites.

Multibillion-dollar plans to recreate once-natural water flows to the Everglades involve building massive reservoirs and filter marshes across hundreds of thousands of acres south of Lake Okeechobee.

But saving an environmental treasure threatens to trample sacred ground. Some of the land identified for restoration includes historic sites where South Florida’s earliest Native American inhabitants lived and buried their dead.

An infusion of federal money has been a shot in the arm for long-stalled Everglades restoration construction. Now South Florida’s tribes and other advocates for preserving historic sites are calling for caution as construction plans spread to more land.

Saving what remains of the Everglades shouldn’t mean disturbing what remains of some of the Everglades’ earliest human inhabitants, said archaeologist Bob Carr, executive director of the Archaeological and Historical Conservancy in Davie.

“Our mission is to preserve as many of the sites as possible in South Florida,” Carr said. “We are not convinced that destroying them is a necessity of restoration.”

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Remember the hubub last year regarding a large 1,000-year-old mound that was going to be be bull-dozed to help construct a Sam’s Club? The archaeologist to signed the archaeological report is now backtracking and claims the mound was made by natural causes.

The Anniston Star reports that Robert Clouse told the Oxford city council Tuesday that erosion and other natural forces likely created the mound. Clouse heads the Office of Archaeological Research at the University of Alabama and the University of Alabama Museums.

Clouse was answering questions about the mound behind the Oxford Exchange and the apparent removal of another mound at the historic Davis Farm site.

Clouse last year signed a report on the potential archaeological significance of the mound. Protests erupted last year when the city tried to remove the hill under the mound to use as fill dirt to build a Sam’s Club store nearby.

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A homebuilder unearthed prehistoric Native American remains during construction in Texas.

Nueces County Medical Examiner Ray Fernandez on Monday examined two partial skeletons found in the 8000 block of Wooldridge Road near Oso Bay. He determined the bones were prehistoric and will ship the bones to a University of North Texas anthropologist for verification, Nueces County Medical Examiner’s chief investigator Ric Ortiz said.

An archeologist also examined the bones and determined that they are Native American, said Texas Historical Commission Archeological division Director James Bruseth.

Hogan Homes, which is selling lots in the neighborhood near where the bones were found, stopped new construction until a company-hired expert determines the size of the burial site found.

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Teenage friends hiking in Ohio stumbled across the 160-year-old remains of a Native American.

When County Coroner Dr. Mark Kaehr arrived, it didn’t take him long to decide the bones were human, probably at least 160 years old and most likely Native American. The arrowhead and a claw-tooth piece of jewelry in the hillside were certain clues.

Now, everyone is trying to decide what happens next.

The bones, an almost complete male skeleton, have been turned over to forensic specialists at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. Madison County Sheriff Jim Sabin and the Ohio Historical Society also are involved.

The bones were found on private property in Jefferson Township, and Sabin said that although the property owners have a right to the artifacts, they are cooperating with investigators to make certain everything is properly recorded and protected.

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The discovery of Native American artifacts dating back thousand of years has stalled sewer construction in Rhode Island.

Archaeologists retained by the Warwick Sewer Authority have been unearthing a variety of artifacts in test trenches for more than three years and recently issued a report stating that the Mill Cove area was probably home to generations of Native Americans, with artifacts from about 3,000 years ago through the 1600s.

Given those findings and the need for far more extensive archaeological study before any sewer construction could begin, the WSA is exploring less-disruptive engineering methods while other city officials say that sewers may be out of the question for the neighborhoods just north of Warwick Neck.

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