Construction crew members working on an addition to Randall Laboratory were surprised last Monday afternoon when they began uncovering human bones at the site.
Department of Public Safety (DPS) Capt. James R. Smiley says by Thursday more than 20 skulls and other bones had been unearthed from about 24 cubic yards of soil.
The bones appear to date from the turn of the century, according to Smiley. Also found were sheeting type material and a bottle from Brown’s Drug Store. The drug store, owned by Henry J. Brown, was located in the 100 block of Main Street at the turn of the century, according to Wystan A. Stevens, an Ann Arbor historian.
Stevens says that DPS’s conclusion that the bones are the remains of bodies used for dissection is logical since they were found near the site of the old Anatomical Laboratory, where students did their dissections, and not far from the original Medical School, which burned in 1912.
The original campus plan called for a small cemetery near the Medical School but the land was never used as a cemetery, Stevens adds.
Called to the scene when the bones were discovered, John M. O’Shea says the presence of jars, broken glass, parts of skulls and long bones—tibia and femur—that had been sawed through convinced him that the site was not a pre-historic Native American burial site or cemetery. O’Shea is director and associate curator of the Museum of Anthropology and associate professor of anthropology.
When the investigation of the bones is completed, the Department of Pathology will handle disposition, Smiley says.
