Oldest human remains in Puerto Rico expand knowledge of island’s roots

Thirty years ago, a private contractor unearthed a collection of human remains, along with tens of thousands of other artifacts, from the Ortiz site, what would prove to be the island of Puerto Rico's oldest burial location. The artifacts from the site wouldn't be analyzed until recently when that 35-box collection landed in the possession of University of Miami bioarcheologist William Pestle, associate professor and chair of the Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences. Pestle, who specializes in the study of human skeletons from archaeological sites, has spent the past four years delicately investigating the bones, some dating back nearly 4,000 years, using a fine-grained approach. A considerable addition to what was previously known about the earliest people of Puerto Rico has been revealed according to Pestle's peer-reviewed study recently published in the PLOS ONE journal, entitled "Reconsidering the lives of the earliest Puerto Ricans: Mortuary Archeology and bioarcheology of the Ortiz.” "Through colleagues I got connected with Daniel Koski-Karrel, the archaeologist hired to direct the excavation in 1993, because he knows that I work in the part of Puerto Rico where this material came from,” said Pestle, who had permission from the Puerto Rican government to do this work. "In consultation with the government of Puerto Rico, we were able to broker a deal, where the material would be able to be studied by not just me but my students. And then it would go back to Puerto Rico.